


she saw the sun ride in

by kathleenfergie



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Blood and Gore, F/F, Fairy Tale Style, First Born, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magic, Mentions of Killian Jones | Captain Hook, Mentions of King Leopold, Mentions of Snow White, Mild Gore, Witches, it's written sort of like a fairy tale at some points, mentions of cora
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-23 01:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9632864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathleenfergie/pseuds/kathleenfergie
Summary: On the edge of the woods, where the mist is far too thick and tree roots swallow the earth, there lives a witch.“Are you married yet? Any children?”“No, Miss. I’ve no family.” She looks remorseful, as if she could thrust her hands back and have Regina break them again if it meant leaving without angering the witch.“But you might,” Regina muses to herself. “One day. When you do, you will give me your firstborn.”Regina wonders how many years have passed between her and Emma Swan. She is not a frail and shaking girl this time, but a swollen and angry beast.“I’ve come to pay a price, Miss,” she gasps.





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> hey friends! this was originally posted about two weeks ago, but since then i have found a beta and updated part one. this fic was based off of [this](http://hedaoftheworld.tumblr.com/post/143056295740/ok-so-its-the-classic-story-of-a-young-maiden) tumblr post. the word count for each part will be inconsistent but usually over 5000 words. 
> 
> i play a lot with canon and twist it around. there's also a bit of an ambiguous timeline, but when the fic is over i will post a timeline of events in the end notes. the gore warning is just for when emma or others get banged up a bit and there's some detailed descriptions of blood, etc. i'm always a little nervous about the way i write regina, but so far some lovely comments have let me know that i'm doing alright. because of the fact that this fic disregards her evil queen reign, she's obviously going to be different and possibily ooc. she's an amazing and complicated character and i want to do right by her. 
> 
> before you read, i'd like to say thank you to witchpieceoftoast (on ao3 and tumblr, go check them out) for being my lovely and supportive beta. i've never had one before and always had anxiety about sharing my work with somebody but they have treated me so kindly and helped me out tremendously with my tenses. i'm so thankful for them, so please go support them, too!
> 
> enjoy your read. i own nothing. i'm really gay.

**_part one_ **

On the edge of the woods, where the mist is far too thick and tree roots swallow the earth, there lives a witch.

The villagers like to say she used to be a queen, a wicked step-mother cast out for the murder of her step-daughter. Others, who’ve traveled, tell stories of the Wicked Witch of the West and her sister, wearing magic silver shoes and hiding in the Enchanted Forest. No one knows for sure what the truth is, yet they still come to her with their troubles. 

She’d been young when the tales began, the blanket of trees whispering about the mysterious girl in a dark hovel. 

Twenty six years of life under her black dress and she held evil in her hand, purple and sparkling. The witch healed and hunted, took trinkets or tears as payment. The ones who’ve been to her have to leave a part of their souls behind or go home empty handed. No tonic to cure or weapon that will vanquish. 

One morning, when the blinding sun rises and peaks desperately through the leaves and fog, a knock sounds on her door.

Regina is awake - she rarely sleeps, never soundly - and the knock reverberates through her skull as she rises from the fireside.  Behind the door is a frail girl, barely twelve years old.  The witch surveys the shaking thing, long blonde hair over one shoulder in a haggard braid; boots with toes that peek out; thin trousers accompanied by a brown shirt and vest.

The girl cradles her hands to her chest , the bruised and gnarled limbs clear in the morning grey. 

“Will you help me, miss?” She asks, quiet and strong. Her cheeks are flushed and her breath comes out in a mist. Regina knows instantly that she has no horse - the small thing walked all night through the forest. 

“Come in,” Regina commands, moving away from the door. “Don’t touch anything.”

The blonde laughs briefly, ‘ _ as if I would,’ _ unspoken from her lips. She settles at the kitchen table as the witch pulls a tin from one cupboard, tapping on the lid as she turns to sit. “Give me your hands.”

She does as she’s told and Regina opens the tin, dipping her fingertips into the balm. Her hands cloud with purple as she rubs the balm onto the girl’s, focusing intently on knitting the bones back together. The girl hisses as the  _ crack _ of a knuckle sounds. The witch smirks and finishes, smearing the last of her magic and medicine across the girl’s palms. 

“The bruises will disappear shortly. Don’t move your hands until you get back home,”  Regina instructs, leaning back in her chair while the visitor stares at her hands.  “What shall you pay me with?”

“I have nothing but the clothes on my back,” the girl replies, staring at the witch. “Will you have my hair?”

“I have no use for a peasant’s locks. Do you have jewelry of any kind? A token?” She shakes her head and Regina sighs. Everyone always has something and she thinks of the things her teacher used to ask for. “Are you married yet? Any children?”

“No, Miss. I’ve no family.” She looks remorseful, as if she could thrust her hands back and have Regina break them again if it meant leaving without angering the witch. 

“But you might,” Regina muses to herself. “One day. When you do, you will give me your firstborn.”

“What do you need of a baby?” 

“What do  _ you _ ?” Regina counters, narrowing her eyes. “How did you hurt your hands?”

“I stole a man’s purse and he crushed them with the hoof of his horse.” She pauses, quirking her lips. “Have you ever taken a baby before? Will you hurt it?”

“That won’t be any of your concern. It will be years to come, I feel. Go back to your pickpocketing, girl.” Regina stands and goes to the doorway, not waiting for her to follow. 

“My  _ name _ is Emma,” she juts out her chin stubbornly and stares at the witch, something Regina recognizes flashing in the young girl’s eyes as she turns back. “Emma Swan.”

“Well, Emma Swan, you will come to me when your child is to be born, have the baby here and leave without it. I’ll have no decoy babes left on my doorstep or you escaping to another realm with your sweetheart.” Regina scoffs and opens the door behind her, the cool morning air hitting her side. “Swear it.”

“I swear.” Her deep green eyes hold a shimmer of terror in them but Emma does not falter. “I swear it.”

* * *

 

The witch grows older and does more equally gruesome and holy things. She starts collecting hearts: of the innocent and insane, ones faintly beating and others like trumpets. They keep her more awake these days, beating an eclectic staccato against her hovel’s walls. Those who do not meet their end of the bargain wind up in a box, walking lifeless through the dark forest. 

Stories go on and twist with each moon cycle. The heartless wander through her forest, they say, tearing travelers apart with their teeth, leading any who come to kill the witch to their deaths. Some claim she’s uglier than a toad, that she’s green like her sister or blood red with sharp teeth. Others are blinded by her beauty and pay with their eyes so that they never have to see another beautiful thing again. 

Regina remembers every soul that has visited her forest, asking for magic and might. She remembers farmers begging for fresh crops, weeping into vials and coming back years later with corn and bread. The brave ones leave gifts on her doorstep, though they’ve already paid their price. She doesn’t think too often on these acts of kindness.

The heartless kill for her and fend off armies from nearby kingdoms, coming to cut off her head. She was a queen once, haven’t you heard? She knows how to play those games. Many try, some making it as far as the door before they dissolve into fire. 

She hears little of the young girl in her kitchen with broken hands. Regina can barely catch time as it passes, but asks after the baby several times. 

Each time she appears before the girl, still young but sharpening with age and hunger, she is neither pregnant nor in love. It would almost be annoying if Regina’s business was slow. She leaves Emma Swan and goes to another village to rebuild a stable. To cure a child, sick from the cold. To ask the Queen of Winter to melt the snow a month early. 

Regina comes again and again, Emma Swan alone and sadder every year that goes by. There are hollows in her cheeks and an ache in her bones. It’s almost palpable, as if the witch could pluck it out of the air and spin it into magic.

The scars on her hands never heal and there are new marks all over her body. A cut from a bramble across her heart, something she earns during an escape from the sheriff; scratches on her neck from a night creature; fresh bruises on her forearms from the latest barfight. Emma Swan is not a lady and she is often nursing a black eye or split lip, chunks of hard snow pressing against her face.

“You’ll never find a husband if you punch every man that looks at you, Miss Swan,” Regina admonishes on the eve of Emma’s seventeenth birthday, touching her cheekbone lightly and sending a tingle of magic through the skin. She winces, then smiles. 

“Maybe that’s the reason I’m punching ‘em.” She laughs, a beautiful, shining thing. “They can’t touch me if they’re bleeding on the floor of a bar.”

“Any child of yours is wound to be a brute. Despite my greatest efforts, I fear that he’ll end up a flying monkey in Oz with my sister.”

“So that  _ is _ true!” Emma smirks. “Not green, I reckon, though?”

“She is, actually. It’s quite unbecoming.”

* * *

 

Again, it’s morning when the same knock sounds on the wooden door of Regina’s hideaway. She’s forgotten how old she is - Regina looks young, but she can see the lines scoring her face and hands - and wonders how many years have passed between her and that first meeting with Emma Swan. 

She is not a frail and shaking girl this time, but a swollen and angry beast. She can’t be older than twenty, but the witch swears it’s been a long time since she’s seen Emma’s blonde head.

“I’ve come to pay a price, Miss,” she gasps, hand against her back. “Get this damn thing out of my body.”

Emma was never a soft girl, but even now Regina backs away from the fire on her tongue. The forest is silent this morning, the heartless feeling fear for once as Emma’s energy radiates throughout the trees. 

“When I said  _ ‘come to me when your baby is to be born’ _ I meant a month before, Miss Swan, not the moment the babe is slipping from your thighs.” Regina grabs one arm and leads her to the pallet by the fire. She summons a basin of warm water and thicker blankets for the blonde. 

“Details are key,” she grits out. “Labour started before I began my journey, so I’d say he’s coming soon.”

“I cannot believe you walked here like this! You know how to summon me, idiot.” Emma’s back arches and she cries out, the candles flickering and casting a harsh glow on the scene before Regina. “You could have died, woman.”

“I swore,” she grit out. “But I’ve been a little busy.”

“With the father, I gather?”

“Fuck him,” she growls, but it dissolves into a gasp, a tear slipping from one eye. Regina moves to brace Emma’s back as she screams through a contraction. “I was...far away in another land, I didn’t want you to come all that way just for me. Have you ever delivered a baby before?”

“No,” Regina admits. “I trust you haven’t either?”

“Wouldn’t be here if I had, would I, Miss?”

“Regina,” the witch cuts in. “My name is Regina.”

“Finally,” Emma quips, moaning and collapsing against the woman behind her. “What will you name him?”

“I don’t know,” Regina admits. “Would you like to?”

“No, I don’t want him. Not if he won’t ever be  _ mine _ .” Emma looks up at the strange woman, tears flowing freely now. “They only set me free from a hanging because I was pregnant.”

“Try not to get hanged in the future, Miss Swan,” the witch replies, voice softer than usual. “What did you do this time? Steal another man’s purse?”

“Something like that,” Emma nods. “Gold is a heavy thing to run with.”

Silence falls for a time but Emma’s contractions grow closer as the minutes tick past.

“Name him something nice, something fancy like yours.” Regina laughs at that and reaches for a cloth, dunking it in water and running it across Emma’s forehead. “What does it mean?”

“Queen,” Regina murmurs. “My mother named me Regina because I would be a queen one day.”

“And were you?” Emma asks, breathless.

“Yes, but I ran from her and from the kingdom I married into. That was years ago. I...hide here.” Regina may have pushed her through the looking glass eons ago,  but she has never felt safe from her mother.

“What does my name mean?”

“Whole,” Regina tells her. “It comes from the Land Without Colour. There’s many Emmas there.”

Emma says nothing after that, only switching between panting and crying out from pain. Regina holds her until the contractions are seconds apart.  She’s seen childbirth, has used magic to make sure it came to pass, but never has she brought life into the world  with her own hands.

“What will you name him?” Emma gasps, and then the baby is coming as she pushes with every bit of her thin body. The boy is a tiny, red and squawling thing, wiggling around in Regina’s bloody palms. The afterbirth comes next and when it’s done, Emma looks up at the baby once, shaking her head before sobbing and passing out. Regina cleans the infant off and wraps him, setting him near the hearth. 

Emma wakes as Regina trails her fingertips down the side of her pale face, magicking away the pain in her head. “I’ll name him Henry. After my father.”

“Henry,” she nods. “What does it mean?”

“Why are names so important to you, Miss Swan?” Regina asks, coming to sit at the head of the tired woman, her blonde mane in the witch’s lap. She sifts a hand through the locks, magic tingling against Emma’s scalp. She sighs, leaning into the witch. 

“All I have is my name. A boy found me in a ditch when I was a newborn, wrapped in a white blanket with  _ Emma _ stitched into it. The thread was purple and there was a ribbon woven through the edges.” She closes her eyes and blinks away tears, from both physical pain and the memories. “I lived with a butcher and his wife, the Swans, until I was three and they had their own baby. I was sent away to an orphanage with nothing but my name and blanket.”

“I’m sorry,” Regina offers. 

“No, you’re not,” Emma counters in a whisper, her green eyes opening to stare up at the witch. “Henry; what does it mean?”

“Ruler of the home.” The woman in her lap smiles sleepily and nods. 

“A little prince for you, then,” she says and quiets, slipping back into slumber after a few moments. Regina stays with Emma in her lap for what seems like hours as she strokes her hair, but soon the babe is awake and in need of feeding. 

The witch untangles herself from Emma gently and goes out to the small stable where her cow is kept. 

It had been a gift from another sorceress years ago: a cow that never aged and always produced the finest milk. She works quickly to squeeze the hot milk into a pail before bringing it back inside. Summoning the glass bottles she’d made specifically for the baby - _for_ _Henry_ , she reminds herself - she fills one and ties a piece of fabric around the tip so that the glass will not hurt his delicate mouth.

After checking that Emma is still sleeping soundly, Regina goes to the baby and picks his writhing form from the pallet. She secures the blanket around him again so that he is tightly swaddled  before placing him in the crook of her arm and tipping the bottle towards his small mouth.

As she walks around the small cabin and sways with him in her arms, Regina begins to hum softly, a song she remembers her father singing when she was a girl.

Long ago, before Emma Swan, a carpenter lost all his tools and creations in a great forest fire. Regina had given him new tools and told him where he could find the finest wood in all the realms and he paid for it with his happiest memory. Years later, a terrified messenger brought a crate stuffed with hay to her door. The trembling man placed the large package in her parlour before scurrying back to his wagon. 

Inside there had been an ornate crib with rocking legs, a myriad of horses and knights carved into the sides. Regina had spent hours running her fingers over the grain, willing herself to memorize the movement beneath the wood. If she stared at it long enough, the horses began to dance and still to this day she remembers soft whinnies in the back of her mind.

The witch hadn’t known Emma was pregnant or she’d have already dug the giant thing out of storage. 

Regina closes her eyes and reaches through her mind , looking into the cellar that lay beneath the cabin.  It takes a while of sifting through the bottles of wine and rum that are far too old before she can hear the sound of horse hooves. The witch exhales and twists one wrist , the crib appearing in a waft of purple mist.

Regina gathers a handful of blankets from beside the hearth and arranges them in the crib before placing the baby -  _ Henry _ \- inside it, spelling it to rock him. 

She’d known that Emma had been awake for some time, but the blonde had made no sound.  Now, as she sits up and stares at her son in his beautiful crib, she begins to sob. There is still blood and other fluids covering her body and as she cries, Regina cleans her up so that the trauma can end.

“You’ll love him, won’t you?” The distraught blonde asks. “His heart stays in his chest.”

“Emma, I would never do that to him,” Regina begins but the other woman holds up a shaking hand. While her body conveys fear, her voice is strong and stern, green eyes storming.

“Swear it, Regina,” she commands, like the witch had all those years ago. “Swear that you will never harm your son.”

“I swear,” the witch whispers, stunned and stuck on the words  _ your son _ .

* * *

 

In the beginning of Henry’s life, he cries for hours in his crib and even more loudly in her arms. She’s never been around children, save for Snow, and infants are a whole new world. With motherhood she discovers the wonders of Agrabah’s coffee, and muffling charms. 

He’s always been too curious for his own good, but now that she places all of her dangerous magical items above the reach of his sticky hands, Regina sleeps a lot more. 

As a baby,  it is easy to just keep him in the crib by the fire while Regina sleeps on her pallet, but as he grows and his limbs stretch past the confines of carved horses, she has to seek help. The carpenter who made his crib is long dead, and as she reaches out with her magic and feels the realms, she cannot find any of his kin.  She’s old though, and she hears the whisper of the minds in this world.

When Henry is three, she carries him on her hip to her new horse; it was a gift from an unknown source, but some of the heartless remember a cloaked figure riding in on it before disappearing into the mist.  It lives in the stable with her cow and as Henry grows, he spends afternoons  learning to walk underneath the horse’s soft belly, stroking the hairs.

Regina nearly had an aneurysm the first time he did it, fearing the horse would kick him and send him flying to his death. The creature was gentle and kind, however, and she let him do whatever he wished as long as his small palms held carrots. 

They mount the horse , boy secured in front of witch, before riding through the morning mists.

Though she cannot locate any family of the dead carpenter, she’s heard of one carver who lives near  Sherwood Forest, said to be able to create masterpieces.  Regina doesn’t need  a masterpiece, truly, just a second floor addition to her hovel,  but she will not  put her home in the hands of some careless man.

The journey takes longer than she likes, what with all the stops she has to take for Henry and every new peasant that begs for her help. She wears a hood but the villagers that pass always seem to know that she has powers, as if she has this ominous aura that screams  _ witch  _ despite straying so far from her recognizable forest home. 

Now that Henry sits on her hip wherever she goes, they feel safer coming up to her, as if a mother could be anything but dangerous. Mothers have tried to kill her; they were always the cruelest creatures in the realm. 

She finds the carpenter’s cabin squeezed between massive oak trees that seem to grow with the structure of his house. It is different from the spindly limbs of her birch and cedar, blanketed in mist and the heartless. 

He’s an old man with gnarled fingers, but everything in his shop is hauntingly beautiful. Regina has to stop Henry from running his small hands over everything, the carpenter laughing at his bright eyes and babbled questions. 

“I live in a house smaller than your own,” she explains to Geppetto, holding a squirming Henry in her lap; he stills when the man hands him a carved swan and Regina attempts to hide her eye roll at the symbolism. “My son and I are going wild in such a small space and I’d like you to build a second floor. Rework the whole cabin if you must and I’ll pay you with a favour.”

Geppetto considers her words silently for a few moments before retreating into the back room. When he returns, a timid creature is clinging to his pant legs, form hidden except for a pointy nose and glass eyes. 

“I do this for you,” he begins, sunken eyes wet, “and you make my boy human.”

It’s a worthy price and Regina is willing to pay it. 

“Thank you,” she says, staring at the wooden boy. “Why is he like this?”

“He made me,” the small, shaking thing responds with a bright voice. Regina’s eyebrows raise in surprise but she quickly fixes her expression. “You’ll make me a real boy?” He asks, eyes heartbreakingly hopeful.

“Yes. When your father finishes his job, call on me, and I will do what he asks.”

After telling him where to find her home, Regina whispers her name into Pinocchio’s ear and leaves, Henry asleep against her shoulder. The wooden swan is still clutched in one chubby fist; she’d tried to give it back but the carpenter had shaken his head with a laugh. He told her that Pinocchio carved it the week before and she really doesn’t care, staring into the evening sun.

The witch finds an inn and secures a room by healing a sick pregnant woman, the owner’s wife. He gives her the largest room they have and a purse of coins to pay for food or drink. She thanks him with a nod of her head and carries Henry upstairs, the boy still fast asleep.  Her horse is safe in the stable, but as the sun finally sinks beneath the treeline, Regina finds herself restless and antsy.

Leaving Henry in the oversized bed,  Regina places several charms  on the room to keep him safe, including one that will alert her if someone attempts to break in.  There is nothing valuable in the room except for her son, but she doesn’t trust mortals.  Sherwood Forest is known for its renegades and bands of thieves; she has no doubts about what kind of souls reside under the inn’s roof.

* * *

 

The witch and her son keep a room at the inn for weeks rather than riding through the forests until Geppetto finishes his work. The innkeeper’s wife, Marian, is kind to Henry and spreads news of Regina’s powers to all that pass through her tavern. It’s been keeping her occupied.

Henry finds himself in the stables more often than his mother would like, grooming horses with Robin Hood and his thieves. 

Regina doesn’t hide her disdain for Robin Hood’s organization but she is grateful for the hospitality. He’s designated a corner in the tavern for her work and Marian’s food is never far away. Regina checks on the baby every so often to appease the worried couple, though she knows that all will be fine. 

Visions don’t come to her often, but when she touches Marian’s full belly and her magic spreads through the woman’s body, Regina can catch glimpses of dark curls and deep dimples. It’s a boy, she thinks, but she doesn’t say so because hope is a very dangerous thing, far  more  dangerous than magic some days. 

She receives news from the carpenter after a month, detailing what has been done to her hovel so far. The foundation was practically untouched, but the wood above ground was weathered and unstable. Geppetto moved all of her supplies and furniture into the basement before tearing down everything and starting from scratch. 

Regina frowns at the idea of a house without her energy staining that wood, but it will return quickly enough.

There is at least another month of work to be done, the carpenter figures, and while Regina is going a little mad living among so many people, she can bear it until her home is complete.

It all means that when she returns home, both she and Henry will have their own rooms and the boy won’t have to share  Regina’s pallet by the fire.  He’ll have his own  space to drag toys around, books strewn across the floor and a window to watch the stars through.

“Would it be rude to assume that you have no husband?” Marian asks one evening when the candles are burning low and Henry is already in bed. Regina chuckles at the question and shakes her head. 

“I killed him, actually,” she admits and doesn’t miss the shock that passes over the other woman’s face. After, Marian is smiling and Regina quirks a brow at the expression.

“I’ve heard so many different stories about you, it’s nice to know which ones are true.” Her grin widens as she fills Regina’s cup with expensive liquor. The witch rolls her eyes but Marian hushes her. “I can’t have it, so you might as well drink it for me. It’s not as if any of the men who pass through here have any taste. I can never understand how Robin and the Merry Men drink mead all day.”

“Different people drink different things. I’ve seen sailors down dinghies full of rum and some kings bathe in wine. Hunters and thieves like their mead all the same.” Marian nods at her answer and leans against the counter, hand supporting the small of her back. “You really should sit down.”

“Not you, too,” she sighs, pulling a stool from under the counter before settling onto it. “It’s bad enough the Merry Men think that they have to carry me up the stairs and that Robin lets them. I swear, once the baby is out of me they won’t give a shit if my back is sore.”

“They’ll take care of the babe,” Regina assures her. “You’ll need to take care of yourself, after.”

“I guess I should listen to someone with experience,” Marian comments, taking the cup from Regina’s hand and sipping. She hums before returning it, setting her chin on one fist to watch the crowd. Regina doesn’t correct her assumption about Henry, only turns her head and mimics Marian’s actions. 

There’s men and women playing dice and drinking, but not the sad kind that Regina often finds near harbours or in the deep winters of Arendelle. The various thieves, smugglers, farmers, and tradesmen were all so... _ warm _ . 

It was an unfamiliar feeling for Regina, to watch a group of people and not hear the walls weeping with unsaid things. Agrabah was hot, but it did not put this feeling in her chest. 

“You look unhappy,” Marian comments quietly. 

“Contemplative,” the witch corrects, still staring. 

“Ah,” the other woman scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Would you like to hear what we’re naming the baby?”

“Not after me, please.”

“Gods, no. I reckon there’s 43 Reginas out there already because of you.” Marian laughs deeply and smiles, teeth bright. 

“I think my last count landed me at 318.” Regina smirks, finally turning to look at the barmaid. Marian raises a brow before shaking her head, still laughing. 

“Georgina for a girl.” Regina gives her a strained look and Marian laughs again. “I know, it’s hideous, but it’s Robin’s granny’s name and he loved her.”

“For a boy?”

“Roland,” Marian tells her, smiling to herself. Regina hums, nodding. “It feels right.”

“Yes, it does.” 

Outside, a rabble starts and the shouting gets louder with each passing second, the slap of footprints like thunder in the night. A Merry Man bursts through the tavern door, the wood hitting itself again the wall; John, she thinks. Others filter in behind him, some bleeding and dirty.

Marian jumps up and hobbles her way to the group, the now silent room all watching. She calls for her husband and he appears, carrying a makeshift stretcher behind him. Regina can see the outline of a body through the cloak and the shaft of an arrow. 

“We ran into knights that gave us trouble,” Robin explains, walking toward the bar. The patrons move out of the way, grabbing their drinks and holding tight. “Most of us are fine but the new one, Swan, she’s was cornered by archers.”

Regina perks up at the name but says nothing as they lift the wrapped woman onto the wooden counter. Marian turns back toward her and already Regina knows. 

“Can you help her?” The kind woman asks, hand on her husband’s arm. 

“Magic comes with a price. What if she dies and cannot pay it?” Regina responds cooly. 

“She can and she will,” Robin defends. “She’s bleeding, please.”

“Fine,” Regina seethes, coming to their side of the bar. “Get out, all of you!” She shouts, throwing up her hands. “Marian, go sit down.”

Coins are dropped onto tables and the crowd filters out, grumbling. Regina pays them no mind. 

“I’ll take her upstairs,” Robin says, arms around his wife. “Call on me when you’re finished.”

She waits until she no longer hears his footsteps and tentatively pulls back the cloak from the body. It’s her, Emma Swan’s beautiful blonde hair braided into a crown, locks loose and curling from the fight. She has a cut above her eye and a bruise on the left of her jaw. Her breath wheezes and Regina moves her hands to her shoulder, where an ornate arrow shoots from. 

“A Merry Man are we, Miss Swan?” Regina mutters, ripping away the collar and shoulder of her shirt to get at where the arrow is lodged in her skin. The wound is still bleeding but the blood is slow and clotting. 

The witch presses fingers down around the head of the arrow and hears a sharp inhale from the woman under her.  The arrow has a large tip and is covered in barbs; it will probably hurt worse coming out than going in. Regina encircles one palm around the base of the arrow shaft, pulsing healing magic into the skin as her other hand rips it none too gently from Emma’s body.

There’s a repulsive sound but the gouge closes soon, Regina’s hand smearing blood as she searched Emma for any damage that still existed. She’ll feel like she’s been hit by seven horses, but Emma Swan would be fine. 

Regina feels her knees start to give out and she gropes at a bar stool with one hand, collapsing into it. Unfortunately from there she has to watch as Emma regains consciousness; she’s done that before and she isn’t particularly itching to relive it.  But, it will be some time before she has strength again.

She reaches out to Henry with her magic and finds him still asleep , sandy dreams floating above his head.  The witch smiles faintly , snapping one finger and extinguishing all but a handful of candles.  The glow carves shadows into the injured woman’s face,  gold and darkness rolling over her features.

“You’re staring,”  Emma groans after a time , startling Regina out of her haze. “Don’t ask, I know what your magic feels like after seventeen years.”

Regina says nothing, but she quirks her brow at the number of years,  almost surprised by how long it has been. She attempts to count in her head but can’t put things together, confused and chewing on one lip. 

“You used to be so much more social,” Emma comments and smirks, adjusting her position on the countertop before hissing at the pain. “Fuck, King Arthur can eat me. I don’t know what knight it was but I blame him for the whole damn thing.”

“You’re no longer in grave danger but you probably suffered nerve damage. What shall you pay me with?” Emma frowns and closes her eyes. Her uninjured arm comes to her throat and she rips away at a chain that wraps around it. 

“This was from Henry’s father.” She bites out and hands it to Regina. It’s a small silver pendant, a swan carved in and painted blue. 

“This will do.” Regina pauses and sighs. She holds the trinket in her fist, already planning to incinerate it. 

“Why are you so sour? I didn’t get shot on purpose.”

“I was wrong to assume you left your bar fighting days behind,”  the witch throws back at Emma.  “ _ The Merry Men _ is a ridiculous name and they’re all a nuisance.”

“Are you really analysing  _ my  _ career choices right now? You’re hardly a saint.”

“I don’t stumble into kingdoms, rob them blind and then run back to Sherwood Forest with the profits, only sharing them with the inhabitants.” Emma scoffs, though it hurts. “I also don’t claim to  _ be _ anything. I can’t control what stories people tell about me.”

“Gods, you really were a royal.”

“You are unbelievable,” Regina snaps and rises, leaving the other woman to say her name a handful of times before huffing as the witch stomped up the stairs to her son. 

She enters the room and flicks a wrist , all of their belongings fitting themselves into side bags and sacks.  Regina grabs them  all before coming to the bed and lifting Henry into her arms.  She pulls up the hood of her cloak and appears in the stables in a cloud of purple smoke. There is now way she is walking back through that tavern.

Sitting Henry on a pile of hay,  she readies the horse and soothes her hands against its snout,  truly looking into the creature’s eyes for once.  Rocinante’s eyes had always been stormy and excited, but this mare’s gaze is calm and almost sad. Regina doesn’t know if she will ever name her, but she decides in that moment to always look into her eyes.

She collects her sleeping boy and swings both of them onto the horse, pulling her cloak tight around Henry. It isn’t cold but she wants to coddle him for the night.

Regina rides toward no direction  in particular , following moonlit roads and trails.  She will canvas for the rest of the month.  She will not see Emma Swan again for five years. 

Regina doesn’t notice her hands are still coated with dry blood until the sunrise.


	2. part two

Henry turns eight and there is a small box of blue silk ribbons left on Regina’s doorstep. 

It’s the fourth year in a row that this has happened and the witch has yet to catch the culprit despite staying up for two days, magic focused.  The heartless hear hooves constantly but see no rider. One claims she saw the sun ride in on a horse’s back and Regina finds the statement far too poetic for someone with no soul.

Yellow dawn creeps through cedar to her window and the witch hears her son stir, no doubt squinting and hiding under a pillow from the day ahead. Unlike his insomniatic mother,  Henry sleeps like a rock and is in no way a morning person.  Regina sets the box of ribbons on the table next to her own gift and waits for the boy to surface, stirring apple chunks into oatmeal.

“Mama?” Henry calls from the landing. 

“Happy birthday, Henry.” She beams at him from the stove and adds sugar to the pot, mixing it in before bringing it to the table. “Come eat.”

He’s only wearing one sock and his nose is pink. Her son is truly a cyclone some days in appearance, but his mind was bright and creative. “Can I open my presents first?”

“Not this time,” Regina grins and spoons out portions for the both of them. 

They eat in silence with heads in one palm, both contentedly thinking of nothing.  Regina is still concerned about the mystery gift bearer, but for now, she focuses on Henry.

“What did you get me?” Henry asks as he reaches for the present wrapped in cloth. 

“A piece of wood,” Regina whispers, nose scrunched in amusement. He laughs and opens it, eyes alight as they run over the leather cover of a notebook, a handful of pencils with it. Henry looks back at his mother with a beautiful smile and thanks her. “I thought it could be a field journal, for your explanations.”

“It’s wonderful, mama.” He sets down the gift and picks up the wooden box, pulling back the lid to reveal the ribbons. There’s confusion on his face but as he reaches out and touches the blue fabric, he lightens up and when he smiles to himself, his nose crinkles. “They’re so soft. I can use them as page markers, or wrap them around the pencils.”

“That sounds like a lovely idea, Henry,” Regina responds, patting his hand. “Once you have more to eat and get dressed you’re allowed the day to explore the forest. Go no farther than the maple trees or a heartless will bring you back home.”

“Thank you, mama!” He bounces in his seat and scoops out a hefty amount of oatmeal for himself. 

He spends some time readying for his adventure and Regina fills a flask with water, assembling a chunk of bread and cheese into a small pouch. She hands it to Henry at the front door and he sticks it in his bag, journal and ribbon wrapped pencil kept in hand. 

Regina kisses her son on the cheek before scooting him out the door. She watches him go for a couple of minutes. Just before his figure disappears from view, he stops and spins his head around, staring back at the house. It tugs at Regina’s heart and she hopes he can sense the small smile on her face.

She goes back to the table, noticing that Henry simply stuffed all the ribbons in his journal, the box sitting open and empty. For the first time, she sees the small envelope nestled in one corner of the wooden box. It says her name and she frowns, picking it up and crossing her arms, inspecting it. 

Finally, Regina opens it and finds a yellow buttercup pressed between the paper. She frowns again but it softens into a sigh.

* * *

 

Regina palms a trinket hanging in her doorway, lips pressed in a thin line as she watches the retreating figure of her last client. A child of the moon came to her door for a wolfsbane tonic and to have some wounds healed. Her pack banished her none too gently and Regina knows that the tender scars bisecting her face will never fade. 

The wolf feared that she wouldn’t be able to control her actions without her pack, the full moon approaching in under a week. Wolfsbane was poisonous in large doses, but if taken lightly would give the girl consciousness while she turned. 

She’d paid with a vile of her own blood, and as Regina goes back inside, she holds it to her chest and snaps her free fingers to summon a tome from her bedroom. It settles on her work bench and she leafs through it, looking for a specific charm to harm night creatures. Wolf’s blood is an ingredient in several different spells and potions, on that she’s never had before, and she plans to add a charm to Henry’s collection of protection.

The boy had been granted full access to the forest around their home  and the witch has been giving him all manner of magic to ward off attacks, along with a small dagger. She doubts the heartless will cause any trouble - they fear her far too much, even without their hearts - but she knows that others find themselves in her forest every once and awhile.

She keeps him close enough, but the boy is far too curious for his own good and always goes deeper into the woods than Regina likes. He always comes home with herbs and different plants  for Regina to use, showing her his field journal filled with notes in his young, scratchy handwriting.

He’s taken to calling some of the heartless his friends, and it makes a part of Regina ache. Old fears keep them hidden away in her forest and there are times that she wishes she could give Henry a more common childhood. The boy is content with his life but his mother still catches herself in bouts of sadness for him.

She’s wondered, more than once, what his life with his birth mother would have been like and she imagines him growing up alongside Roland and becoming a Merry Man, a knight, or a book binder.  There are many ‘ifs’ that plague her but Henry pulls her out of those hazes  with his small laugh and never ending questions about the world.

* * *

 

“Good evening, sorceress,” Geppetto says to her, hands on the door. 

“You know my name,” Regina huffs, pulling up her hood. 

“I also know that you are hiding.” He closes the door then and Regina’s eyebrows shoot up as she glares at wood. 

The witch shakes her head and walks to the tree where her horse is tied, grumbling about the old carpenter. Henry had expressed interest in making friends with the no longer wooden boy and over the years she’s made many trips across the kingdoms to let them explore and grow together. 

Pinocchio always calls her by her first name and smiles when he sees her, freckles dotting his round face. He is kind and a good friend to her son, and Regina is glad to leave Henry overnight at the carpenter’s.

Mounting her horse, she lets it walk and drifts through the forest, staring blankly into the dark trees as the animal takes random paths and roads. It’s winter in the Enchanted Forest and the surrounding realms. As the afternoon sky shifts, she thinks of nothing, watching the faeries jump around and chase each other. She’d never be fond of the creatures but Regina could not deny their simple beauty. 

After a couple of hours, the cold sky makes the forest pitch black, the new moon hiding from the realms. There is a light snowfall, small flakes melting into her hands. Regina stays to the wide, main road and it eventually leads her to a familiar light source.

She stops her horse at the treeline and contemplates the tavern, orange maple leaves blanketing her from patrons’ eyes. There is someone playing the accordion inside, and Merry Men shouting and singing along to its tunes. It is such a tempting sight and an unwanted part of Regina yearns for the warmth she knows is inside.

Regina brings her steed to the stable and pays the boy, then goes around the front to the door.  She stands outside it for a moment before sighing sharply and pulling her hood tight. There is a table with two chairs empty in an unlit corner and she chooses it, walking briskly until she is able to sink into one chair.

Marian is making her way around the tavern with a tray of cups and a large jug, pouring alcohol into empty tankards and inviting more people to settle in and have a drink. Her body is graceful now and strong; Regina smiles under her hood, happy to see her healthy. There is no sign of the child anywhere, but she knows that it is quite late.

The beautiful barmaid approaches her and her eyes are warm. Marian sets her tray and jug of mead on the table before reaching her hands to Regina’s jaw. She tips the witch’s head back so that she can look in Regina’s eyes, leaning down to kiss both cheeks and her forehead. The witch inhales with a hiss and Marian chuckles.

“You’re a terrible hider. I saw you the second you stomped in the door.”  Regina smirks and shrugs.  She pours her friend a drink before walking off.  Regina watches her go and exhales, finally. 

The witch sips on honey ale and tunes out the rabble, focusing only on the bottom of her cup. Regina wonders what Henry and Pinocchio have gotten themselves into this evening, wonders what Geppetto carves while he listens to the chatter of boys. He likes to give the sorceress charms on strings and for some reason, she takes them home and hangs them in the doorway. Protection of the most mortal kind. Henry likes it, anyways. 

There’s movement next to her and as Regina snaps out of her own mind, she watches Emma Swan pull out the chair beside her and plop down. She has a drink in hand and Regina can smell that it is certainly  _ not  _ mead.

The witch stares, clearly startled by the blonde woman, whose hair is fashioned in a half-up-half-down style, the top section pulled back by a braid and the rest flowing over one shoulder. There are tendrils and wispy curls around her face and neck; Regina’s mouth is dry. Emma’s in simple high-waisted breeches with a billowy white shirt tucked into a brown vest. As she moves, Regina can hear the clang of pendants hitting each other against her chest. 

“Regina,” Emma greets her, tipping her tankard back and taking a gulp of what the witch thinks is rum. 

“Miss Swan,” Regina responds in a neutral tone, pulling her hood off.  She can’t hide from Emma Swan if she is right beside her.  Now that the fabric’s shadow is gone, Regina eyes Emma more carefully. The first thing that she notices is the rather large, ornate ring on her left hand. “Maybe not.”

Emma laughs and holds up the ring, the red stone catching the candlelight. 

“Marriage of convenience, I promise,” Emma smiles and her round cheeks are pink. “I’ll tell you the big story another time.” 

“And how does that work?” Regina inquires, smirking into her cup. 

“I get half of his earnings, which usually involves a lot of gold, rum, and weapons; I have safe passage to any realm as long as he gets a kiss; and while he campaigns through every brothel, I get to sleep with whoever I want.” Emma finishes her explanation and drinks again before setting aside the tankard, setting her chin on one fist. The metal clanks against the wood and Regina cocks an eyebrow to herself. “Plus he gives me lots of presents, which is good for my ego.”

“Evidently,” Regina comments quietly. 

“What did you name the horse?” Emma asks, eyes bright. 

“Pardon?” 

“Your horse,” Emma prompts. “I saw her in the stables. What did you name her?”

“Nothing,” the witch says. “I’m not close with the animal. She gets me places, that’s all.”

“I thought you were fond of horses,” Emma frowns, lips pursed. 

“I was,” Regina replies cryptically. Emma hums, face still pulled down. “She has beautiful eyes, though.”

“Did Henry like the ribbons?”

Regina is quiet for a moment, staring at the blonde. She thinks then of the small envelope hidden in her bedside table, the long dead flower pressed between the rough paper. The outline of the same flower is tattooed on the inside of Emma’s wrist, petals poking through a brown leather lace. 

“Yes, he did,” she tells Emma finally. “He uses them to gather samples and mark spots in his journal. He...thought they were very soft.”

“Good,” Emma smiles, a small thing. It doesn’t quite reach her green gaze. She reaches into the pouch at her belt and pulls a handful of coins from it, throwing them on the tabletop. “Come outside with me.”

“Why?” Regina narrows her eyes. She isn’t used to casual exchanges with Emma Swan, they’d only seen each other on the basis of Regina’s magic.

“Marian will kill me if I smoke inside, come on,” she beckons, grabbing her cloak as she passes the doorway. Regina is left to glare at the spot where she used to be before huffing and following the annoying woman outside. She looks one last time for Marian but doesn’t find her, exiting the tavern with a sigh. 

Emma stands by the stable, leaning slightly on a tree with something in her mouth as she rummages through pockets, her white cloak billowing in the light breeze. Regina’s dress drags through wet leaves as she comes to stand beside Emma. 

“Been playing with giants recently, have we?” She asks, touching the cigarette in her mouth with one finger, igniting it. 

“Thanks,” the blonde mutters, tucking some hair behind her ear. She inhales the tobacco smoke and removes the cigarette with one hand, exhaling. “And I work for them actually. I’m a bounty hunter. I track down humans who have stolen from the giants and they pay me in gold...and oftentimes cigarettes.” 

“Doesn’t their tobacco make you hallucinate?” Regina laughs, waving a hand experimentally through the smoke. 

“Only the first few times,” Emma smiles, cigarette between her teeth. “I slept with a mermaid the first time I had one; Killian was pissed. Mostly because the mermaid stole from him while he was hitting on her,” she laughs from her belly then. 

“Do you often attempt to court the same people as your husband?” Regina smirks, pulling the cigarette out of Emma’s hand and taking a drag, handing it back as she exhaled. “If my mother could see me now.”

“No, I usually court witches,” Emma deadpans. “Ones that live in forest, you know the sort.”

Regina is stunned for a moment, smoke still leaking out with her breath. “You’re courting me, Miss Swan?”

“Not really, if I’m honest,” the blonde laughs and shakes her head, snowflakes catching on her cheeks. “Evidently I’m not doing so well. I thought the horse, the flower, the gifts for you and Henry, they were getting me somewhere.”

“What else have you given me? I honestly did not know that the horse was from you,” the witch blushed, frustratingly attempting to avoid Emma’s gaze. “Henry’s presents I suspected but denied it because of... _ something _ , I don’t know.”

“There’s been a couple of times where the giants have given me far too much food for one person so I sent some to you with a messenger. Other trinkets and pretty things, the sort you’d expect from a suitor.” Emma shakes her head. “It was part apology for angering you the last time you were here. Did you honestly not think it was me?”

“People that come for my magic leave tokens of their appreciation almost every day, it’s hard to discern which ones would have any  _ romantic _ qualities, Miss Swan,” Regina huffs, avoiding the blonde’s gaze. The other woman snorts and inhales, laughing to herself as she exhaled smoke.

“When’d you get the tattoo?” Regina asks quietly after a pause, eyes pointing toward Emma’s leather wrapped wrist. The flower peaked out from beneath the strap, black ink stark against her pale skin. 

“Oh, it’s my branding from the giants. They call me Buttercup,” she explains, rolling her eyes. “If we have a visible brand, a giant won’t squash me on sight. It’s handy. They originally wanted to call me the White Swan but that sounded too much like a ship’s name for me and also a little too close to Snow White. Not one to compete with legends, I am.”

Regina hums but says nothing, looking at the ground. There’s a sour taste in her mouth at the mention of Snow, but if Emma catches the change on her face, she doesn’t say anything. The witch does not regret running from that castle the second King Leopold’s funeral procession was over.

“In any case, it’s good work. Less dangerous than stealing from kings and better pay.” Emma pauses and rolls her eyes, mostly to herself. “Getting real tired of climbing beanstalks, though.”

“The closest stalk is miles away, what are you doing in Sherwood?” Regina asks, fidgeting with her cloak as the cold wind blew past. 

“I’ve got a small cabin not far from here,” she explains, throwing the butt of her cigarette to the ground and squashing it with her foot. “I spend most of my time in the Kingdom of the Giants but during slow periods I’m here. Here or with Killian, but never for long; he’s got a nice ass but not much else.

“Come back for a drink?” She asks quietly, looking at Regina from under her lashes. 

“Still attempting to court me, then?” Regina quips, smirking as she moves toward the stable to fetch her horse. “Did you ride here?”

“No,” Emma says from behind her. “It’s only a ten minute walk through the woods. We might get tangled up in fairies but there’s relatively no danger on the way, if you don’t count the Sheriff.”

“Never was one for fairies,” the witch says under her breath, collecting her steed and throwing another coin into the stable boy’s hand. He grins at her with his toothy mouth and skips off. Regina thinks of Henry then and hopes that he’s enjoying his time with his friend. 

They walk in almost silence, save for Emma giving out directions every once and awhile, her hand lazily pointing through the trees. Eventually, a small structure comes into view, the dark sky doing nothing to help the two navigate the clearing. It wasn’t anything special, just a cabin with small windows and a covered porch. There’s a chair on the stoop next to a tin overflowing with cigarette butts and Regina has to scoff at that. 

“Bit of a habit, hmm?” She asks, eyes pointed toward the bucket. 

“Don’t harp on my coping mechanisms,” Emma says a little childishly before swinging the cabin door open. She snaps her fingers and the candles light, the glare startling the witch behind her. “I learned that spell ages ago. I haven’t got much magic, but I can do parlour tricks.

“Do you think you’ll teach Henry magic?” Emma asks, settling into a chair, her foot kicking out another for Regina. She unties her thick cloak and throws it across the room to her bed. 

“If he wants me to,” Regina replies slowly, sinking more gracefully into her own chair. “I’ve a rough past with parenting and magic, so it’s not exactly something I’m pushing on him.”

“I guess I’m lucky that I never had any parents long enough to be fucked up by them,” Emma muses, grabbing a bottle from the windowsill beside her and pulling the cork out with a  _ pop _ . She frowns as she searches for cups, but only one surfaces, so the blonde pours a hefty amount for the witch before cradling the bottle against her chest. “Sure, life did a whole bunch of other shit to me, but at least I had a baseline for terrible parents. Anyone who didn’t ditch me on the side of the road usually passed with flying colours.”

Emma sips from the bottle, her mouth pulling into a hard line as she thinks on her words. There had been a butcher who beat her so badly that she hadn’t been able to walk straight for three days, the seamstress that stuck her with pins for fun, a fisherman and his wife that would push her head under water if she smart mouthed them, and others.  They all blend into hazy, hard memories that she visits on cold nights, but she shakes her head of them and turns her gaze back to Regina.

“Still hiding from your mother?” Emma changes the subject, swigging down more alcohol. Regina takes a delicate sip and grimaces at the rum on her tongue. “I know, it really is terrible, but Killian loves it and gives it to me in surplus.”

“Your pirate really needs a better palette,” Regina comments, nose crinkling. “I don’t know where my mother is or if she’s still alive, but I know her wrath. After she was gone from my life I did things that went against everything she believed and did for me. She’d hurt anybody to get to me, that I know.”

The two women sip their drinks, alcohol sloshing around in Emma’s bottle the only sound in the cabin. The silence goes on for a time until Regina sees Emma smile out of the corner of her eye, the blonde humming to herself before going to a cabinet on the other side of the room. She searches through the dust, grunting at the items that knock over, before pulling a box into the light and grinning madly. 

Regina arches a brow and Emma winds a key on the side of the box, popping it open once it can’t be turned anymore. A small crystal spins inside and candlelight bounces off its facets as a tune plays softly. The witch recognizes the waltz and frowns, confused. 

“You were a queen, right?” Emma asks, still smiling. 

“Why is that important?” Regina shoots back, eyes narrowing. 

“I’ve never learned how to dance before,” Emma tells her, looking down at the box as it continues to twinkle out notes. “Unless you call what the Merry Men do dancing.”

“You’re mad,” Regina says, flicking a stray piece of hair out of her face anxiously. “And drunk, Miss Swan. I’m not going to dance with you.”

“I can hold my rum, thank you very much,” Emma replies smartly, crinkling her nose as she comes back toward the witch. “Dance with me. Come on, I know you haven’t forgotten.”

She sets the music box on the small table and holds out a hand, eyebrows raised in a challenge. Regina huffs and unties her cloak, shrugging it onto the chair’s back before standing and grabbing the mad woman’s outstretched palm. She can’t imagine dancing in great halls dressed like she is, with her black cotton dress and simple corset. If anyone had let a leather-clad Emma Swan into their balls, it would be quite a surprise. 

“Waltzes are about counting,” Regina tells Emma, placing the blonde’s free hand on her shoulder as she put her own at Emma’s waist. “Try your hardest not to step on my toes, please.”

Emma laughs, throwing her head back as Regina counts out loud in triplets, leading Emma in the rhythmic turns ingrained in her bones. There was a time when she loved dancing, before Snow and Leopold. The princess used to drag her up and down her father’s castle, begging Regina to dance with her and pretend to be her prince. 

The last banquet had been just before Leopold’s death, the king celebrating his and Regina’s anniversary. She had worn blue or purple, she can’t remember, and Snow had been donned in white, as always. The teenager whirled her around the subjects, pressed close to her step-mother as she gossiped and laughed. It was agony. 

Regina killed the king days later and held Snow in her arms at the funeral while her father packed her bags upstairs. She regrets leaving him behind,  but the witch had known he would live a better life  in the Enchanted Forest and not with her. He passed years after, when she was still combing clients for information about the kingdom she’d dumped in Snow’s hands. 

“You’ve got that face on,” Emma whispers into her ear and Regina snaps out of the haze of memories, finding silence instead of music. 

“I’m counting,” Regina frowns, hushing her. She doesn’t stop the dance, hoping it would continue to distract the strange woman in her arms. 

“No you’re not,” Emma smirks, her face too close. Closeness was the one thing Regina had always loathed about dancing, pressed up against the king for years while her mother watched from across the hall. Regina stops moving, the illusion ruined. Emma’s face drops, arms still around the witch. 

“I should go.”

“Okay,” Emma says sadly, backing away from Regina. She turns, a hand coming to her mouth as she chews on her fingers in thought. She watches as Regina gathers her cloak and trails behind her to the door, closing the music box as she passes. “Goodbye, Regina.”

“Goodnight, Miss Swan,” the witch replies, looking up at the dark sky. 

“You really need to start calling me Emma,” the blonde rolls her eyes. Regina turns to her and gives a small smile. 

“Another time,” she whispers, eyes still sad. Regina sighs and walks to her horse, not bothering to look back at the doorway. “Emma.”


	3. part three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: walks in four months late with a 8k chapter
> 
> so i pushed this shit out of my brain this week to attempt to get a chapter up before i leave for the summer (i work at a summer camp). hopefully it's alright. the chapter is unbetaed so i really tried my hardest to keep the tenses correct, but if there's mistake just know this chapter took four months to write and i'm tired lol. 
> 
> pls enjoy all my neverland head canons it's like my fave setting in ouat 
> 
> i'm not as confident in my writing rn so i keep feeling like i'm writing everybody ooc. if i'm right let me know, but the next chapter will present situations where our leading badasses will appear more like they are in the show. 
> 
> sorry this is so late. ily. *finger guns*

It’s spring when they meet for the first time, leaves and blades of grass clinging to whatever was left of the morning’s dew. 

Henry slips out of his home while the sun was still rising, tip-toeing past his mother’s room with the utmost care and knowledge of the floorboards beneath him. It’s the first time in three weeks that Regina has gone to bed and her breath is steady, dust particles dancing in the dim daylight every time she exhales. 

Henry knows she’ll be upset if she finds out that he went exploring without permission, but he  _ also _ knows that when the witch sleeps, it’s for a long time. When he was very small and she used to curl around him next to the fire, he’d keep his ears peeled for snoring. It was the one hint that Regina was in a deep sleep and wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon. He’d sneak out of her embrace and stand just outside the door, the small clearing in front of the house giving him a patch of stars to stare at, bewildered. 

Regina hadn’t been snoring when he left but it was light out, but he had his magical munitions and his dagger; the nine year old sees no problem in his quest. A heartless caught him five minutes into the forest and he’d given her a smooth quartz crystal as a trade for her secrecy. She smiles and looks at it sparkle in her palm, walking lazily away from the boy. 

Henry is inspecting a strange purple moss that was spreading throughout the silver birch, scraping off patches and securing it in a vial, when a twig snaps rather violently and he hears somebody curse behind him. 

“ _ Shit _ ,” the person hisses quietly and Henry whirls around to find a hooded figure crouched low behind a bush. He grips the dagger tightly and juts out his chin, squinting in an attempt to see them better. 

“Who’s there?” He calls, voice shaking only slightly. Usually folk who came looking for his mother went straight to the door or were directed there by a heartless, but not this one. The stranger straightens out of their crouch and pulls back their hood, revealing a blonde woman with flushed cheeks. 

“Hey, kid,” she says sheepishly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. As she does this, Henry notices the blue ribbon she’s tied back her flowing mane with. The edges have frayed and the colour has faded, but he knows the ribbon messily keeping her blonde curls to one side matches the ones in his satchel. He lowers the dagger but doesn’t approach her, instead dropping his moss sample in his bag, fiddling with a ribbon inside. 

“Why are you following me?” The boy asks and she grimaces, stepping out from her hiding spot into the few meters of grass that separate the two. 

“I really wasn’t, I promise,” she laughs a little awkwardly. “I was on my way to see your mother and I was just being...nosy, I guess. 

“My name’s Emma, by the way,” she adds after a moment, quiet and suddenly shy. 

“Henry,” he beams and she hopes the complete shock on her face doesn’t show through. 

There’s a million different worlds Emma has dreamed of: ones where she never stole that man’s purse and consequently, never met Regina; sometimes she pleads with the witch and takes the baby home - whatever that means - with her; others, she hangs and nothing matters. She’s imagined meeting him, but she never thought that he’d be as beautiful as he is. It’s almost heartbreaking and a small part of Emma wishes that the only memory of his face in her mind was still the small, sleeping baby in an intricate crib. 

“Did you bring mom another gift? If she’s awake when we get back I may not live to see another morning, so we have to be prepared.” The joke causes Emma’s face to twist in confused amusement, but she just shakes her head. 

“Smart, huh?” She mutters and comes to his side tentatively. “Lead the way, kid.”

“ _ Henry _ ,” he repeats, raising his eyebrows and giving her a pointed look. 

“ _ Kid _ is good enough for me.”

Not only is the witch awake, but she is standing in the doorway with her arms crossed and a deadly look in her brown eyes. She altogether ignores Emma as the pair approaches, one hand coming away from her middle to hold up the quartz crystal he’d given to the heartless. 

“Henry Daniel Mills,” she begins and the woman standing next to Henry visibly shrinks, as if she, too is about to get a strip torn off. “Have we not discussed the parameters of your excursions? Did you  _ forget  _ that you need permission to go out?”

“Well, no,” he begins, peeking up at his mother through his lashes. “But there’s this new moss that’s been growing on the silver birch and it disappears when the sun is high, so I  _ had _ to go early to get my samples. I would have asked you to come with me, but you were sleeping!”

“So you deliberately broke my rules, then?” She counters, one eyebrow raised in a way he is too familiar with. “And then, you bribed a heartless with something that doesn't belong to you.”

“I mean, that's a possibility, but they don’t have any sense of morality, so she could have just been lying to you for...fun?” His voice tilts upward with the last word and Regina huffs. 

“I think we both know that they  _ can’t _ lie to me, Henry. You’re banned from hot cocoa for three days.” She puts a hand to her forehead and sighs heavily, leaning slightly on the doorframe. “Did you get your samples?”

Emma watches a smile creep onto the boy’s face as he skips toward his mother, pulling a small glass vial from his bag. He pulls off the top and demands she smell it, the witch’s face hesitant as she leans down. She sniffs the moss and her face scrunches, Henry giggling at the expression. 

“I would have more if  _ she _ hadn’t show up and spooked me,” he jerks his thumb back at Emma, and Regina looks up, noticing the bounty hunter for the first time. There is a myriad of emotions on her face that Emma can’t discern, but Emma comes forward and gives a shy wave. Henry looks at her pack expectantly and asks, “What did you bring us this time?”

“ _ Henry _ ,” Regina admonishes, nudging his shoulder as her face pinks.

“Come on, it’s the only reason she comes to the forest, I have to ask.”

“Just because you’ve noticed a pattern doesn’t mean you should abandon your manners, sweetheart.” Regina shakes her head and waves them inside. “Come in, both of you and clean off your boots.”

Emma and Henry do as their told, one smirking and the other smiling to himself. Emma takes off her cloak and sets it on the stand, swatting some hair out of her face before setting her pack down on the table. Henry plants himself across from her while Regina puts the kettle on.

The boy's eyes are gleaming as he looks expectantly at Emma, the sound of Regina clinking mugs together in the background as she spoons tea leaves into each.

“Alright,” Emma begins, reaching into her bag. “Have you heard of King Midas?” She asks, pulling a velvet bag out onto the table. 

“Yeah, he turns things into gold.” Henry shrugs, turning to his mother. “Two scoops of sugar, mama.”

“You'll have one, dear.” 

Henry rolls his eyes and faces Emma again. “Gold.”

Emma quirks an eyebrow at him but chuckles anyway, untying the bag. Inside is a small golden apple, smooth but tarnished. Daylight bounces off it, making Henry gape as his hands move immediately to inspect the treasure. 

“The legends say that the first thing he ever turned to gold was an apple, after picking it for his daughter.” Emma settles her chin on one hand as she watches Henry grin madly at the token. 

Regina pours the water and adds sugar to the mugs: one for Henry, one for her, and two for Emma. She cradles them gently in her hands, going to the table to give the pair their respective drinks. 

“What do you say, Henry?” The witch sighs, settling down besides her son, mug in both hands as she cooled it with her breath. 

“Thank you, Emma,” the nine year old says timidly. “How did you get it?”

The blonde fumbles and presses her lips into a thin line, before leaning in close to Henry, whispering: “Um, I'm  _ very _ sneaky.”

Regina snorts and shakes her head, staring at Emma with a doubtful glance. “I assume you ran very fast, then, Miss Swan?”

Emma blushes and takes a sip of her tea in lieu of an answer. Henry barely notices, still running his small hands over the surface of the apple. “Can we put it in the swan’s nest?”

“You just want an excuse to climb the house.” Henry shrugs, unashamed at his motives and Regina sighs dramatically. “I'll be supervising you the entire time. Make sure the swan has an acceptable amount of leaves for her nest.”

“Of course, Mother,” Henry grins and Emma watches the two like a stunned deer, both charmed and alarmed at the casual, silly interactions between mother and son. 

“Come, let's go do that while our guest finishes her tea. Grab the stool to boost you up.” 

The pair disappears outside for a few minutes, Regina's worried prompts wafting in the front entrance as Henry clambers up to the awning, his feet thumping against the wood. Emma sips her warm tea and smiles to herself. She takes out the carrots she brought for the witch’s animals and waits anxiously for Henry and Regina to return.

Henry bursts back in with the stool, setting it back in its place. “My friend carved a wooden swan and we keep it in a nest on the awning. It can guard the apple.”

“Sounds like a plan, kid,” Emma responds, fiddling with the handle of her mug. She waves a hand over the pile of carrots. “These are for the horse and cow.”

Regina grabs them as she passes and places them in a pale near the stove, humming softly. 

“Mama, may I use your work stove to boil my sample? I want to see what it does.” Henry has his satchel in hand and he's already inching toward the door of his mother's work room.

“Yes, but you're not to drink anything it makes before asking me. Wear an apron, please.” He scampers into the back room and the door closes swiftly, his delighted musings heard from behind it. 

“Mills?” Emma asks after a quiet settles and Regina comes back to sit across from her.

“My mother's family were millers. Her father made her carry all the flour in a rickety wagon to the town an hour away, every day.” Regina tells her this as she inspects the wood grain, picking at bits of plants and crumbs that pepper the table. “When she learned magic, she left that behind to spin gold out of her anger. I've been told that blonde hair makes the finest gold.” She quirks a brow at Emma pointedly. 

“I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm in a bind and need something to barter with,” Emma laughs, downing the rest of her tea and setting the mug aside. “Henry’s beautiful.”

Regina’s stares at Emma for a long moment and the corner of her mouth lifts. She nods and plays with end of her shoulder length hair. The witch had been wearing her hair in a shorter style, finding far too many strands caught in her cauldron. She eyes the ribbon wrapped around Emma's mishap of a ponytail and wishes the woman wasn't such a mesmerizing whirlwind.

“You didn't use your cloaking spell when you came today. Has your  _ air _ of mystery worn off?” Regina quips. “Where did you learn magic, exactly? I'd know if it was from me.”

“You tell me if the  _ mystery _ is still there,” Emma sighs, tucking some hair behind her ear. “You’re not allowed to snipe at me for not telling you this years ago but I actually spent time in Neverland when I was a teenager.”

“I'm absolutely going to snipe at you, Emma!” Regina's eyes bulge. 

“Okay, okay, I know but you would have gotten all upset about it and gone to Neverland to rip out Peter Pan's heart or...something.” Emma shrugs and winces at the same time, throwing her hands up weakly. “I went after I turned seventeen. When you become a Lost One the world forgets about you until you return - if you ever do. You wouldn't have noticed my absence while I was there.

“I think I was gone for three years but I lost count of my days somewhere in the middle after I met Henry's father.” Emma's face is red as she crosses her arms, back slumped. “Damn, I knew I’d never do this smoothly. I discovered I had magic when I saved my friend from shadows in Dark Hollow. The whole candle trick, you know?”

Regina pinches her nose for a tense moment. “At least now I know why you're so young. It actually has been troubling me.”

“Yeah,” Emma nods. “I ran around with Neal for a couple years and then I was pregnant and well you know the rest.” She palms her chest for a moment and thinks, eyes downcast. “My friend, the one I saved, she got us off the island and back in these realms. If I had family I'm sure she'd belong in that category.”

Regina is very briefly sad for the woman in front of her. She thinks of Emma and her gifts, of her constant appearances in Regina's life. The witch had never been able to grasp Emma's longing for  _ something  _ but now she looks at the strong woman and traces her eyes across where she knows there are scars, where there are pockets of hurt and memories that Regina feels so harshly in her own body. 

“What happened there?” She asks, softer now, one of her hands coming to search for Emma's. The blonde tentatively places one palm in Regina's and the witch holds it firmly. 

“Eh, some light starvation, a coup or two against Pan. Mostly just crawling through the forest and hoping the Shadow didn't catch us; sometimes wondering what we've done to anger the mermaids.” Emma laughs to herself . “Lily was my best friend and a foundling, like me, but you could say she's a little more special. She doesn't know who her parents are, but she's from a line of dragons. The nobles that adopted her used magic from the Dark One to keep the dragon hidden. Someone from a line of royal dragon families is a valuable target and they did it to keep her from harm, but she likes to tell it differently than me.

“The island has its own flow of magic and any enchantments placed on a person or thing disappear when you go there. Unless it's an inherently magical object or you're a magic user, all the energy is swallowed by the island to fuel Pan. When Lily arrived, she was 19, the oldest Lost One. Pan doesn't care much for ages if you're broken and bitter enough. The magic tampering with hers dissolved and when she figured out how control the dragon, she flew me and Neal away.

“Neal had an affinity for star charts and was able to learn the flight path that Peter used to steal children,” Emma smiles a little sadly, her eyes somewhere else. “After all the Lost Boys went to sleep and Pan's flute was quiet, we took off with only our clothes and lots of fear.”

There really isn't anything Regina can say, so she grips Emma's hand tightly and smiles warmly at her. Emma watches as Regina's eyes crinkle at the edges and it stirs that empty sea deep in her chest.

“Henry loved sneaking out to watch the stars when he was little.” Emma tries to laugh, but the sound catches in her throat. “His friend Pinocchio carved a wooden swan years ago and ever since then it has lived in a nest on top of the awning. It's one of our protectors, according to Henry.”

“He told me of it, yeah. I'm glad he knows this place is safe.”

“You'd think the books he reads about monsters and  _ dangers untold _ would deter him from his misdeeds, but the boy  _ is _ nine.” Regina sighs and waves her free hand in the air. “I can't fault him for being so smart, either.”

“That’s all you, you know,” Emma tells her softly, eyes far too shy. “He loves you very much.” 

Again, Regina has no response and blushes slightly, her usually cool face warm and beautiful. Emma longs to take their clasped hands and press a kiss to the witch's knuckles, but she stomps down on the idea and keeps still. 

Instead, she pulls away and leaves Regina's palm empty on the table. Reaching behind her neck, she pulls her chain off, untangling it from stray wisps of hair as she brings it in front of them. Emma fiddles with the pendants for a moment before placing the bundle of metal in Regina's hand, still waiting on the tabletop. 

The offering puzzles Regina and she brings it closer. She inspects the mermaid she remembers noticing back at the tavern, smoothing one thumb over the top of the metal disk. There's a small ring of tarnished stones, but they manage to find some sun as Regina moves them through the light, rays glinting back at her. She recognizes the sigil of the Merry Men stamped into a coin but her curiosity is peaked by a small, scraggly piece of what she thinks is a flat rock. It's slightly curved and there's a myriad of raised lines on the top that she thinks could be dragon script. 

Regina looks back at Emma, face questioning the object. 

“That's Lily’s. It's from her egg, which is a little weird to wear around your neck if you think about it too long, but she loses personal belongings very easily. It's the only thing she has of her family and since we've been together for years, she said I might as well have it.” Emma grins at the memory of her friend but pulls her attention back to Regina. “I was wondering if you would take care of it for a while.”

“Why?” The witch asks, but holds the necklace close to her chest. “I'm assuming it's some kind of rogue, life threatening quest. It's your style, after all.”

Emma relaxes slightly and gives Regina that crooked smile, her eyes warm. “Before I left the Merry Men, one of the youngsters was taken, a stable boy. I contemplated what to do for days while his family continued on with their life, oblivious to it all.”

“You knew he was gone?” Regina asks, attempting to wrap her head around the last half an hour.

“Lost Ones can absorb Neverland’s magic; it's what keeps them young and can make them almost as strong as Pan, without the flying and spell casting abilities. If you have natural magic, you can use the island to fuel it, like I did in Dark Hollow. When a Lost One leaves the island, they take some magic with them and can sense Pan if he's near and remain memories of others that get taken. Some people I've met can still hear sobbing at night. It's essentially punishment for leaving.

“When I escaped, I'd  _ never _ even thought of going back.” Emma shivers a little, remembering that terrifying first ride on Lily’s back, Neal behind her. “But, I started to hear him cry. It kept me up for about a week before I made the decision to summon Lily. We went back to that island and took him in the night; the jungle can get so dark that even the Shadows can't see you. The first time, we were lucky, but by the third or fourth kid Pan caught on.”

“You’ve been doing rescue missions,” Regina surmises, nodding. “You  _ are  _ a bounty hunter, yes?”

“Yeah,” she chuckles, rolling her eyes. “The giants have enough human employees now that I usually only have two hunts a month. When Lily’s too busy eating sheep to answer my summons, Killian helps, but he isn’t fond of the island. Spending three hundred years in solitude really puts you off a place. Pan also knows the Roger’s magical signature and it’s harder when he’s prepared for me.”

“So, if I’m understanding this all correctly, you’ve been doing this for half a decade and never told me? I have  _ magic _ , Emma,  _ I  _ could have helped you.” Regina frowns at the blonde who scoffs. 

“You couldn’t have exactly just left Henry or brought him to the island, plus I knew you’d make a face at me and convince me not to go. I  _ do  _ know you, Regina.” Emma waves a hand in the air, huffing. “I’ve been doing it long enough now that I’m not an idiot about it. Lily will always be an idiot, but that’s really just her.”

“She sounds even worse than you,” Regina mutters, pinching her nose and pushing away the pain that forms in her head. She lets out a heavy sigh and then looks back at Emma with tired eyes. The pendants are still in one palm and she slips them over her hair, the metal settling nicely below her bust. “I'll keep these safe for you.”

Emma smiles beautifully and it becomes one of those moments where Regina can no longer deny how much the woman opposite her causes a desperate ache in her heart. 

“Come,” the witch beckons, standing from the bench. “Let's go see what mischief Henry has concocted.”

* * *

 

Regina spends the next few weeks with a hefty batch of spring customers, flowers and fresh wild berries offered from the palms of small children. Henry glues himself to her side and watches as she weaves magic into objects, the boy standing on a stool in front of the cauldron. Regina has to laugh when he counts his stirs out loud, switching from clockwise to counter clockwise and cursing slightly if he gets it wrong.

She'll always give him a light tap on the shoulder when he lets out something too inappropriate for a nine year old boy and he shrugs sheepishly.

The witch finds herself grabbing Emma's pendants everytime she can't remember the way the sunlight glints off of her blonde hair. She knows that the mundane world forgets those that visit Neverland, but she pushes the hazy image of Emma to the front of her mind and commands Henry bring treasures back for the wooden swan whenever he ventures out. Her son never fails to come home with purple flowers, vials of nectar from the strange tree that grows behind the house, or other shiny things he finds in the forest. 

He isn't quite as powerful as his mother and can't understand her silly wants, but Henry does as he's told and smiles through Regina's odd comments. 

One evening, she hears hooves outside the door and has to keep herself from holding her breath, squashing down the sickly feeling of hope that sprouts in her chest. She’s sequestered herself in front of the hearth with a shawl, but she startles out of her blank stare when the hooves sound again. 

Regina goes to the door and opens it slowly, the dark night spreading through the courtyard. She curls the fingers of one palm and a soft ball of light forms, illuminating a pale yellow horse. It's a large beast, its speckled face turning toward the witch. It knickers and trots over to her, pushing itself into the doorway before licking Regina's face. 

She shoves the horse’s snout away and wipes her cheek, frowning at the creature. 

“That fool better not have given me another horse,” she grumbles but pets its mane anyway, her fingers tangling in blonde braids and bits of debris. “Come,” she commands and tugs the beast by its hair toward her stable. 

It follows her immediately and makes soft knickers as she rolls her eyes toward the sky, where she imagines Emma's stupid face to be. 

After a quick check that the horse wasn't male, she guides it into the wide stall that held her own dark steed. The two animals consider each other for a moment, until the witch's horse rubbs her neck against the newcomer.

“Play nice, you two,” Regina tells them like she would Pinocchio and Henry. She places a small charm on the stable and gives the cow a scratch between the ears before going back in to sit at the hearth once more.

Hours pass until the moon starts descending back toward the horizon and Regina loses her thoughts in the dying embers, the warmth still barely there and keeping feeling in her toes. The downside of mist clinging to every surface in her woods was that its cold ate at one's bones.

The witch goes to her well and gathers water, the bucket sloshing as she carries it back to the house. She pauses just before the back door, watching fairies lick nectar off the peculiar tree Henry liked, their wings glittering in the dark morning. Regina used throw fireballs at them when she was younger, annoyed by their twittering and affinity for biting. Henry manages to find their gentler side and the creatures sit on his shoulder some days as he records his ventures in his journal.

Regina sets the water on the floor next to the stove and goes to her front door to watch the sun rise. As she leans against the doorframe and brushes a lazy hand across Henry's charms, she sighs. Her chest aches with the absence of her  _ friend _ , the only term she could come up for Emma lately. She lingers on one of the blue ribbons holding up a wind chime, the soft notes filling her doorway. 

If the witch could find any word that would describe what she felt for Emma Swan, her foolish mind offers up  _ love  _ and her old heart stutters in a way she wishes it wouldn't. It was unbearable at times.

First light creeps over leaves and grass, the hazy outlines of trees appearing in the distance. 

Regina notices a shadow of something coming through the treetops, what she thought could be thunder accompanying. It was odd; her forest had many rain storms but thunder and lightning was rare. If it came, it was usually south of her, toward the main roads. 

Yellow and orange rise over the horizon and Regina looks up, hoping to catch a glance of whatever was making the noise. As the booms grew closer, a dragon soared over her clearing, circling a few times before diving toward the ground. 

It lands in front of the witch, a shivering child on her back and Emma Swan limp between her jaws. The dragon snorts and moves forward, large head and long neck urging Regina out of the way. Lily, she assumes, reaches as far in the doorway as she can before depositing the unconscious woman on the floor. She nudges her snout against Emma's cheek before backing her way out. Regina glances at the blonde before turning to Lily. 

“Boy,” Lily rasps, voice low and gravely. She jerks her horned head at the boy and knelt down as Regina came to his side. 

She flicks one wrist, summoning a spare cloak from the house and wrapping it around the child's small frame. 

“Hello, dear,” she greets him quietly. “Are you hurt?” 

He holds up his chafed and blistered hands, Regina taking them in her own gently. She knows it is from gripping the dragon's harness tightly for too long. The witch brings them close and whispers warmly against them, magic purpling between her and the boy. He frowns but doesn't seem in pain. 

“Magic always comes with a price,” Regina explains, giving the boy back his hands. “Give me your worst memory.”

He nods, not fully understanding, but allows the witch to touch his forehead as he leans down. Regina sees a rush of images and ambient voices echo in her ears. She tenses but stills smiles when she opens her eyes. 

“There,” she says, smoothing the lines of his crinkled brow. “Now it won't be as bad to remember.”

He gives her a shy smile and Regina returns it, pulling away and going back to the dragon. 

“He'll be fine. Emma?” She asks in a strained voice, crossing her arms.

“Fool,” Lily snorts and shakes her large head. “Pan is strong. 

“Jackass,” she adds after a pause and eyes Regina, who sighs instead of laughing. Lily huffs smoke before lifting off, her wings silhouetted by the sun. Regina doesn't watch her go. 

Instead, she sucks in a breath before rushing into her cabin. She puts a muffling charm on Henry's room so that he'll sleep longer and lifts Emma's crumpled form into the air with her magic. Holding open the door to her workroom, she places the injured woman on her cushioned bench.

She doesn't have the patience to fetch supplies manually, the water pail and a pile of rags appearing next to the witch. Regina pulls a chair stool under her and dips a rag in the water, scrubbing the dirt and blood from her face and neck. Her hair is still pulled back in a tight braid, but blood has dried in parts of it and some strands hang loose. Regina frowns when she notices that Emma’s blue ribbon is soaked with crimson stains.

Emma's pendants clang against each other and create a noise for Regina to focus on other than Emma's soft breathing. 

There was large slash on her arm from a jagged blade, several scrapes on her face and hands, as well as an arrowhead sticking out of Emma's left thigh. Regina scowls at the blonde's inability to dodge arrows after so many years.

Regina places both hands against Emma's middle and leans on them, forehead pressing against her shaking fingers. She draws in a slow breath before exhaling harshly, healing the woman under her. Sitting up, she brings her hands to wipe her face, cool from the well water. 

She hears Henry start to stir and curses the bright sun. Regina leaves Emma to rest, tiredly going to the kitchen; the witch does well to conceal the way her body sways uncontrollably. She cuts up an apple and butters bread, unwrapping a chunk of cheese before setting it all on the table. 

Henry clambers down the stairs, bleary eyed and yawning.

“It's a simple breakfast this morning, my love,” she tells him as he settles at the bench. The boy nods and takes a look around the parlour. 

“Why is there blood on the floor?” He asks in a neutral tone. Regina curses to herself and makes it vanish, pinching her nose bridge. 

“Emma is here, she was hurt,” she says a little tersely. “I healed her and she's resting now.”

“Oh,  _ Emma _ !” He brightens, popping an apple slice in his mouth. “May I see her?”

“Not yet, Henry. She'll come say hello to you when she feels better.” He slumps and chews his breakfast, deep in thought. Regina grabs a slice of bread and bites into it. They eat in silence, birds singing their morning songs into the open windows. 

“Pinocchio says that when people are sick you should give them flowers. Can I go pick flowers for Emma? It feels like ages since she was first here.” 

“Of course, dear, that's very sweet of you.” 

Henry moves to go change, wrapping leftovers to stick in his satchel. As Regina clears their spread, she sighs to herself, training her thoughts on the footsteps of her son above her. She tries not to think too hard on how fast her heart is beating, of the woman sleeping a wall away from her. 

She wishes Henry good luck on his quest and returns to Emma’s side. Regina isn’t surprised to find her attempting to sit up, groaning the whole way. 

“Lie down, you idiot,” she hisses and rushes over, hands on Emma’s shoulders. 

“Hi, Regina,” Emma winces but does as she’s told. Regina reaches for another pillow and props it under the blonde, only sitting once Emma settles. “Where’s Lily and the kid?”

“The boy is home safe, I assume. I don’t mind you dropping in, but I’d prefer if it wasn’t in the jaws of your best friend,” Regina crosses her arms, mouth pulling into a sour frown. 

“Yeah, sorry about that. I fainted and wouldn’t stay on her back; the Lost Boys got me when I fell off.” She palms her middle, face scrunching up in discomfort. She brings her other hand up to her head, pulling out dried flakes of blood and grimacing. Emma’s fingers find the end of her braid and she hums sadly when she realizes her ribbon is no longer a light blue. She tugs it free from her hair and shoves it into a pocket of her vest. “Don’t tell Henry, please.”

“I won’t,” Regina tells her softly, finally dropping her frown for a kind, thin smile. “I’m sure he’d give you another if he asked.”

“Maybe,” she whispers. “Where is he?”

“On an adventure. He wants to see you when you’re ready.” Emma nods and relaxes slightly, turning her gaze on Regina for a quiet moment. She gives a small smirk when she sees her necklace, reaching out with a pointed index finger to pull at the chain and inspect the pendants. 

“Thank you,” Emma says, eyes strange and Regina can’t help but blush, confused but not uncomfortable. 

“I’ve kept them safe, I promise.”

“I know.” Emma laughs quietly, letting go. She doesn’t pull her hand back, instead grabbing one of Regina’s tentatively. “Thank you for healing me. What can I pay you with?”

It’s Regina’s turn to laugh as she brings her free hand to cup Emma’s cheek. “Oh, Emma,” she breathes, leaning forward. “This will be quite enough.”

Regina kisses her and Emma starts, grip tightening around the witch’s hand. They stay locked with each other for a few moments until Regina feel’s the other woman smile. She pulls away and quirks a brow. 

“ _ Finally _ .”

“Hush, Miss Swan,” Regina rolls her eyes and kisses her again. Emma snickers but returns it, body tingling with the weight of anxiety and yearning. She thumbs the creases beside one of Regina’s eyes and hums again, this time light and warm. As they are kissing, Regina remembers something and smirks, still holding Emma’s face as her eyes narrow. “ _ Stop _ giving me horses.”

“What?” The woman shakes with a surprised giggle, mouth open in shock as she braces a hand against her middle to keep from hurting herself. “I haven’t given you any more than the first one!”

“There’s a spotted blonde horse in my stable; horses don’t show up at my door unannouced, usually.”

“ _ Oh _ !” Emma’s eyes widen in realization. “That’s Bug, she’s mine. I left her with the Merry Men, but she does tend to wander. I’m surprised she came all this way on her own, however.”

“You’re ridicolous,” Regina responds as the front door of the house opens and slams shut. She sighs, placing a quick peck on Emma’s lips before helping her stand. 

The pair make their way slowly to the front room, Henry's feet pattering around the entrance as he removes his cloak and boots. Regina opens her workroom door and pushes Emma through, a steady grip on her back and the other still holding onto her hand. 

Henry calls her name and his mother looks up to find him beaming as he holds a bouqet of wildflowers. He rushes forward and wraps himself around Emma’s waist, making Regina suck in a breath to admonish him, but Emma waves her off and lets go of her hand to rub Henry’s back. 

“Hey, kid,” she greets him, face a little pale. “Go easy on me for a sec.” She pats him on the shoulder and he steps back, thrusting the bouqet in Emma’s direction. Her eyes go wide as she takes it, cheeks pinking. She nods, unable to say anything and holds the flowers close to her. Regina can see that her eyes are sad and ushers the two to sit on the bench by the unlit hearth.

* * *

 

“Come with me somewhere,” Regina whispers into the crook of Emma’s neck, the blonde’s arms wrapping around her as they continued to sway in front of the fire. The witch wasn’t quite short enough for Emma to perch her chin on Regina’s head, but she presses her face close to Regina’s hair. 

“And where would a sorceress be taking a fair maiden at this time of night? Sounds like you're out to ruin my reputation.”

“Oh, Miss Swan, I don't think that's something you've ever needed help with,” Regina snickers against Emma's collarbone. “I just want to show you my forest. You'll like it.”

Emma snorts but lets Regina untangle herself. “I've seen the forest before, Regina.” The witch rolls her eyes and puts two fingers on Emma's lips as she goes to take another swig of rum. She makes a childish face but corks the bottle, looking to the stairs. Emma points a thumb in their direction, raising a brow at Regina.

“He'll be safe, dear. There's enough wards for a castle around this place.” Emma smirks, no doubt ready to make a comment about Regina's former royal status, but the brunette hushes her and grabs one arm to lead her outside. 

Emma leans into her and follows, snapping her fingers and lighting a candle as she passes before picking it up. 

“So,” Emma drawls two minutes into their walk. “Where are we going?”

“I'd keep it a surprise but I doubt that would satisfy you. It's the anniversary of Snow White's death; the kingdom puts on a firework display in her honor. We’ll have to walk up the hill, but it’s worth it.”

“Can't you just poof us there? I've seen you do it before.”

Regina snorts and holds tighter to Emma's arm, leading her to the highest point of the woods. They don't need the candle, the witch skilled at lighting her way, but it means that Regina can watch the glow bounce off Emma's cheeks and golden hair.

“I  _ could _ , but then I would miss you annoying me on the journey.” Emma  _ humphs  _ and keeps walking, watching fairies climb out of tree trunks and flutter toward the sky. In groups, they look like floating lanterns or moving constellations. 

“So, did you know her? Snow White?” Emma asks. 

Regina points her gaze to the ground then, worrying her mouth into a thin line as she thinks of an answer. People tend to have an unusual affinity for knowing who she was despite years hiding away and Emma's lack of her story is almost as refreshing as it is terrifying. 

“I did, yes,” she answers in a quiet voice after a few moments. “I married her father when I was a teenager. She...loved me quite dearly but caused a lot of harm in my life. 

“After I killed the king and fled, I dreamt of nothing but murdering her next and making her pay. I'm certain she knew I was responsible for her father's death, but she never came after me. I stopped looking for information on her a long time ago.” Regina pats Emma's hand and gives her a small, sad smile. 

“I've had dreams like that, about my parents. Maybe not so murderous ones but I've always wanted  _ something  _ from them for abandoning me in a late October when I was barely a day old.” Emma leans into Regina and gives her temple a shy kiss, tugging her closer as the incline grows. “I guess without the immortality it'll be stuck on my mind forever.”

“I'm not immortal, Emma,” Regina clarifies. “Magic, in a way, owns the body it chooses to inhabit. I'm alive as long as my magic sees fit. Plus, the only truly immortal person I know is a complete prick and holds grudges longer than the elephants from the Grasslands.”

Her companion laughs and sighs wistfully. 

“I had a job there once. The desert really isn't a place to be lugging gold or fugitives around.” Regina smiles up at Emma, one finger reaching her wrist to trace her tattoo. “It was ‘ _ bloody hot _ ,’ as Killian would say.”

Regina chuckles and directs her to an outcropping that sat over one of the Enchanted Forest’s many valleys. Emma's still wearing her cloak from when she arrived at Regina's home, so she blows out the candle, undoes the clasp and sets the fabric on the mossy rocks. 

“I think I saw this once when I was a kid, but when I would get tossed out I usually ran as deep into the woods as I could. I liked caves, small places to hide where nobody would find me.” She grins at Regina as they sit together. “I was found in a rotted log, so maybe that's why.”

The castle she used to inhabit looks identical still but weathered with age, and the witch points in the general direction of one of the many windows. “That's the great hall. I used to eat dinner alone in there every night, sitting at the dais with a spread in front of me and an empty room. My mother used to use her magic to trap me and keep me from moving; I liked big rooms because I could take up space without fear. Plus, all the large halls in that castle had a dozen exits and secret passages to escape through.

“When Leopold would hold balls I'd dance with him at the beginning of the evening and then glamour myself, slipping through the crowd and out whatever door was nearest. He never noticed, but Snow always did.”

“The giants always invite their bounty hunters to feasts. I've only gone a few times, but it's probably not the same as royal balls. Maybe the ones in Arendelle, but not here. I just tried to keep myself from getting squashed while getting as drunk as possible.” Emma smirks and rolls her eyes. “No comments on my vices, please.”

Regina sighs and reaches for Emma's cheek, pulling her lips in for a kiss. Music sounds in the distance, the trumpets magically enhanced for the nearby villages. The witch really didn't run too far when it was time, but her woods had long felt safe. The realms had a way of stretching and contracting, roads going on forever and then never existing; Regina knows that she and her son were hidden. 

She kisses Emma tenderly for a long moment before facing the castle again. The weather always favours this event, the night sky clear of storm clouds. There was a brief period of silence as one of Snow’s descendants most likely made a speech before lighting the first firework. Regina recalled her having children after she married, but beyond that she knew nothing of Snow’s line. 

As the first fireworks shot into the sky, Regina turns her head slighlty to watch Emma, the lights and colours flashing across the blonde’s features. There’s an awe in Emma’s eyes that reminds Regina of Henry, her expression wide and bright. 

“Lily woud  _ love  _ this,” she whispers. “Though I guess if she was drunk she’d try and catch them in her mouth. That, or blow better fireballs.” She chuckles, still glued to the spectacle. 

“Bring her next year,” Regina prompts, nudging Emma’s shoulder. She blushes and looks down at their entwined hands. 

_ Next year _ , Emma mulls over the words in her head and the permanence of them. She says nothing but holds Regina’s hand tighter and looks back at the fireworks. So far, Regina has been a constant in her life, but Emma knows it’s because she keeps coming back and drinking in the witch’s presence. Since that first open door, Emma had been transfixed by Regina and after outgrowing her childish crush, she’d wanted to love her.

“Neal told me once that we’d move somewhere spectacular, to Arendelle’s coast that touches the Unending Sea. He didn’t care about the winters there or that we didn’t speak their language.” Emma sighs at the memories of Neal tracing her small face in caves and stables, whispering words as he kissed her belly, telling stories to a child that didn’t exist yet. “I’m quite used to people leaving,” she trails off, not so subtly telling Regina that if she didn’t want her, it was something she’d done before. 

“Well, according to you, I’m immortal,” Regina says. “I’ll be here for a while, at least. Henry would be miserable without your gifts.”

They say nothing as the fireworks continue, Regina gazing at Emma’s face softly as the other woman worries her lip. 

The witch says her name and pulls her closer. Emma leans her head on Regina’s shoulder, sighing. 

“If you get me pregnant, we won’t have to make a deal over the baby,” Emma says quietly, her tone sad but still joking. 

“I don’t think I’m quite that powerful.” Regina places a few kisses on Emma’s hair and loops an arm around her back. “Be thankful that you came to me and not the Dark One, I doubt he’d treat you half as kindly as I do.”

Emma snorts at the idea of cuddling up to Rumplestiltskin and relaxes into Regina. 

The show lights up the sky for a half hour as the two sit in silence, a brief reprieve made halfway through as more speeches drone on. They’re too far to even catch the sounds of the words spoken, but as trumpets echo again one last firework is set off, the blinding white lights making up an image of a woman’s face. 

Regin  _ hmphs  _ at Snow White’s portrait, “That’s new.” 

The sky darkens finally and silence blankets the trees. They can see the villages lit up with lanterns and bonfires, but their corner of the world fills with light bird chirps, rustles, and the chatter of faeries. An owl calls and breaks through the tree line, disturbing the branches as it flies and creates a flurry of creatures. The forest settles eventually, the women resting against each other and breathing evenly as their warmth mingles. 

Regina smiles to herself, cheek against the crown of Emma’s blonde head, and thinks of little Emma Swan with her tattered braid on her doorstep all those years ago. 

Emma jolts up suddenly, looking to the sky. 

“Emma?” Regina asks cautiously, pulling away to search her face. 

“There’s something here,” she mutters, moving to stand. Regina scrambles to her full height as well and collects Emma’s cloak. She closes her eyes and reaches out with her magic to feel the wards of her house. Nothing comes back to her and when she opens her eyes again, Emma is bolting down the hill. 

“Emma, stop!” She yells, but the woman is hurdling at full speed through the trees. Regina relocates herself to Emma’s side and grabs her arm, halting her. “Emma, tell me what’s going on.”

“We have to get back,” she replies, breathless and already attempting to get out of Regina’s grasp. “He’s  _ here _ .”

The witch doesn’t wait for an explanation, holding onto Emma as they appear in her front room. Emma detaches herself from the witch before racing up the stairs with Regina behind her. She flings open the door to Henry’s room and curses brokenly, crumpling to her knees as Regina joins her, still calling out in confusion. 

Henry’s bedroom is empty, the candles still burning tall as the breeze from his wide open window moves by the flames. Emma curses loudly and presses her hands against her face to keep a sob in her throat. 

“Pan,” she says between her fingers, voice harsh and lost. “He took him.”


	4. part four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is shorter bc i haven't been able to write anything since i posted the last one and i wanted y'all to have at least some crumb of faith in me lolllll. i pushed this out of brain with all my fucking willpower. i don't have a beta, so it might suck. if i can get in a second half in the next couple of months, i might repost the chapter with an udpated version.
> 
> it's a sad chapter, bit of a filler, so apologies
> 
> i have a playlist i keep on my spotify titled WRiTE YA GODDAMN FIC

Emma bursts out into the clearing, Regina following behind her a little bit numb and simmering with rage. She feels it balling in her throat, her face hot as she watches Emma punch the ground with loud fists and curses.

_I should have been more_ careful, Emma thinks, she should never have let Lily know Regina’s location. “ _Fuck_ ,” she grunts pounding her aching hands against the ground once more before holding them there, a scream catching in her hoarse throat. “I’m so sorry.” She says it again, and again.

Again, before Regina shouts: “ _Stop_.”

Emma does and gets up, turning back to the witch with a broken face, cheeks red and eyes swollen, tears surrounding the edges. This is only the second time she’s seen Emma Swan cry and closes her eyes. “I don’t care for apologies, let’s just…get him _home_.”

Emma nods, though Regina can’t see, and wipes two hands down her face. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

She turns and whistles a tune she heard as a baby and has used many times in her life, the song carrying into the trees. A robin flies through the leaves and flutters onto Emma’s already raised hand. It pecks at her leather strap and chirps.

“Hi,” she begins quietly, still wiping tears from her cheeks. “First of all, notify the boss that I’ll be gone for a bit. Family emergency. Second, let Killian know that I’ll be _very_ late for dinner and that if he’s upset he can kiss a whale for all I care.

“Tell Robin where I’m going and that we’ll land at the inn on our way back.” She kisses the bird’s bobbing head and lifts her arm, the robin taking flight as it sang. Emma watches it go and lets out a painful breath, her lungs feeling as though they could collapse the further Pan flies.

Emma faces Regina again, who still has her eyes closed, but has moved to cradle her face in her hands. Emma goes to her and touches her elbows softly. Regina lifts her head and there are tear tracks across her cheeks.

“You can talk to _birds_?” Regina rasps incredulously. She tries to quip something else at Emma, but her voice catches on a sob and the witch claps a hand over her mouth.

“I’ll find him, Regina, _we’ll_ find him,” Emma whispers and squeezes the witch’s forearms, pulling one forward so she can kiss Regina’s knuckles. “I’m going to need my charms back for this trip,” she lets out awkwardly. Emma helps to remove the chain from Regina’s neck and puts it over her own.

She takes Lily’s charm in one hand and closes her eyes, pressing the sharp scrap of egg into her palm as she lets out a command, her voice rich and low: “ _Lily, Regina’s cabin. Emergency._ ” Light glows through Emma’s fingers for a brief moment and then fades, the charm dropping back against her chest.

“We need to change,” Emma tells the silent woman in front of her. “The jungle is hot, the waters are freezing, and the night can kill you. Nothing is edible but the animals. Wear something you can move fast in and bring any weapons you need. I’ll be in the barn, Bug has my gear, but I’ll meet you inside. We have to catch the right star before sun up, so Lily will be on her way quickly.”

Regina nods and goes back into the house, closing the door behind her. Emma pretends she can’t hear the witch’s loud cries as she goes to her horse and pulls open the satchel hanging off her stall door.

She strips out of her warm riding clothes and pulls on black breeches, her pistol holster going on her right thigh. Next is a billowy black shirt Emma’s certain is Killian’s, her dark leather vest tied overtop. It was a macabre outfit, but she fit in with the shadows of Neverland well. She slipped into her oldest pair of boots, the leather worn and soft on the forest floor, before pulling all her hair back into a braid.

Henry had given her a new ribbon months back and Emma ties her long hair with it tightly, thinking of the boy she loved too dearly. She grabs gloves and tucks them into her breeches, holstering her loaded pistol. There was a knife in her boot and black fairy dust around her throat, and she hadn’t had a good fist fight in months; Emma’s hands clenched as she imagined Pan and Henry around the fire, the monster’s flute in her ears.

For a moment, her body goes limp and she has to stable herself against Bug’s side as a fog of nothingness washes over her.  

When her water broke and Henry's labour began, she walked miles through the forest with this cloud over her body. It was suffocating and yet what kept her going on the journey to Regina’s cabin. The complete numbness created a clarity and hunger for the end that pushed her through the walk and then Henry’s birth. Emma breathes as deeply as she can for a few moments and then grabs her gear before going back to the house, thoughts slowly surfacing from the fog.

Emma finds Regina at her kitchen table, crossing back and forth from her workroom to a pack full of different magical and mundane supplies. She’s silent but the air is full of Regina’s energy, her magic crackling around her as she moves. Every so often, she has to pause to move her dark hair away from her face and Emma sighs, approaching her.

“You’ll want to put your hair up,” she says quietly to the witch, motioning to the bench. “Let me help you.”

For a brief moment, Regina stares at her with a million different things racing across her mind: rage, grief, hopelessness. She bores these things into Emma’s eyes that look too much like an endless sea and has to stop herself from collapsing. Eventually, her shoulders slump and she sits on the bench in front of the woman she loves, summoning a tin of pins to hand to Emma.

Emma works quickly, twisting Regina’s hair so that it lays somewhat flat on both sides of her head, before finishing it in a small bun at the nape of her neck. As she works, smoothing her hands against Regina’s crown, Emma hums the tune she heard Regina sing after Henry was born. She only remembers bits and pieces, but as she tucks the final pin in, Regina grabs for one of her hands and kisses it.

“Thank you,” she croaks out, her voice too broken to be anything above a whisper. Emma wants to say something in return, but the clap of dragon wings breaks their moment. Instead, she places a kiss on Regina’s head and bundles the witch’s supplies.

The pair walks out of the cabin to meet Lily, who Regina can’t help staring at. She’s seen Lily in dragon form before, never having met the woman as a human, but she can’t shake how familiar she looks. Regina knew of only one other living dragon in the realms and Lily’s large form was almost identical to Mal’s. It would have to be a thought to tuck away for later.

“Lily, Regina, Regina, Lily,” Emma unnecessarily introduces them. Lily rolls her large eyes and sends a nod in Regina’s direction, Emma going to fill the sacks attatched to her saddle. She reaches into one and pulls out a pair of flying goggles, passing them to Regina. “They look ridiculous but you’ll want them, trust me.

“Shut up, Lily,” she adds after a moment and Regina quirks an eyebrow, situating the strap around her neck.

“Can you read minds now, too?” Regina sighs at Emma, moving to make sure her supplies are safely secured. Emma secures a harness around above her hips, pulling at the leather until it cinches her waist tightly.

“Just hers. The egg shard has different enchantments, and when I wear it our bodies are connected. It’s why the old legendary knights and their dragons were so deadly. She feels what I can, and vice versa. I can’t tell what she’s thinking from miles away, but it’s helpful for when we’re flying and the only time she speaks out loud is to call me an ass.” The dragon in question averts her gaze by examining her claws and breathing a dramatic cloud of smoke. Emma gives her a dirty look and moves to Regina, a second harness in her hand. “Here, I made some modifications after I fell off last time. It’ll be unpleasant if we slip off the saddle and dangle mid-flight, but it _will_ stop us from getting killed.”

Helping the witch into the harness, Emma pushes Lily’s sarcastic and knowing thoughts from her mind, looping the leather around Regina’s waist and testing the straps for security. “It’s tight, I know, but it will be off soon enough.” She attempts a warm look at Regina, who can only stare blankly, eyes hollow. Emma decides to walk back to Lily instead of mulling over her hurt.

The beast snorts to herself and kneels down so that Emma can attach Regina and herself to the saddle, before boosting the other woman up. “You ever rode a dragon before?”

“Years ago,” she responds, scooting back so that Emma can sit in front of her. _In many different ways, actually,_ Regina thinks to herself as she pulls the goggles around her head. She places her hands around Emma’s middle tentatively and Emma looks back at her, beautiful face distorted by the ridiculous gear.

“How exactly do you _get_ to Neverland?” Regina asks as Lily lifts off, the trees growing smaller and smaller as the dragon climbed.

“Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning!” Emma yells sardonically over the flap of wings, pulling Lily’s reins in the correct direction.

* * *

 The women are quiet as wind whips around them, the clouds finally starting to clear over dark, sparkling waters. If not for the massive, shining moon Regina would have felt they were flying into an abyss. The stars are bright as well, but the witch couldn’t focus on one long enough, the constellations shifting with every passing moment.

They near an island that hums with life and uneasy magic.

Regina can see swarms of pixies swooping through the trees, their glowing shapes twirling and separating in an odd dance. There’s a tall peak on the other side of the island and past that what seems like a swallowing darkness. Henry has told her of this, from his book.

_“Dark Hollow, mama, that’s where shadows are born. They say it’s ‘so dark, that any light that comes near is devoured. Not even Peter Pan can enter this part of the island and come back unscathed.'"_ They had been such spirited words, her son always full of delight and knowledge. She should have listened to his stories more, she thinks, now that she is in one of the places she’s tried to protect him against.

She hopes, desperately, that Henry isn’t frightened. He’s a smart boy, he’s carried things to protect himself with for years and used them more than once. Regina knows this, but there is a wailing part of her that keeps reminding her that he’s still just a _boy_. Small, beautiful, and hers; just a boy.

Emma rests a hand against one of Regina’s, still wrapped around the harness at Emma’s waist.

“Steady me while I get my boots off,” she asks, voice loud enough to be heard over the waves and wind. Regina quirks an eyebrow from behind her goggles but obliges, hand moving to her hips as Emma brings one foot up and then the other. After tugging off her boots, she stuffs them in a sidebag. Regina wants to comment that she really needs to invest in a pair of socks, but keeps it to herself. She doesn’t have the energy for snark at the moment.

“What _are_ you doing?” Regina questions.

“Gaining intel,” Emma offers as explanation, motioning toward the clearest water on their side of Neverland. “There’s a pod of mermaids I trust who will give me any information of Henry’s whereabouts. The island has caves underneath it that lead to the sea, and the mermaids swim through them and spy on the Lost Boys.”

She swings her legs to one side of the saddle and moves her hand to the clip of the harness. Regina lets out a sound of alarm and grabs one of Emma’s arms. “You are staying on this damned saddle, Emma.”

Emma smirks and leans in, kissing Regina. At the same time, she unclips her harness and whispers something against Regina’s lips that the witch can’t make out. Emma leaps off the saddle toward the dark waves below and Regina growls in her direction, her magic unresponsive as she tries to catch Emma with a body lock.

Lily isn’t phased by her idiot friend’s antics, only drifts to a lower altitude until they’ve rounded onto a beach. The dragon touches down and Regina grapples to get her own harness off, spewing expletives in a direction she pretends Emma is. She pushes herself onto the sand and attempts to curl a fireball into the trees.

Her palm sputters and she throws up both arms with a huff, pulling her flying goggles off with a snarl and throwing them into the sand.

“Could you give me fucking hand, lady?” A voice croaks from behind her and she turns to find Lily pinned by her saddle to the sand, human body naked under the leather. “Get this off me and build a fire.”

Regina does as she’s told but glares the entire time, pulling the heavy saddle back so that Lily can crawl out. She’s tall and lean, but her shoulders and arms are muscular; there’s a network of scars all over her body and Regina goes to the trees to keep herself from staring. She gathers wood and stones for a fire as Lily dresses.

The witch can hear her puttering about, a _thump_ sounding every so often as Lily leaps across the sand.

She returns to find the now-clothed woman pushing piles away from a particular spot with her hands, creaking wood sounding as she pulled open a hatch. Regina dumps her cargo and goes to the hole in the ground, stepping down the ladder into what looked like a completely buried weapons store. The walls were made of rotted wood and the smell of wet sand was everywhere, but crates lined the floor with various supplies and jars inside each one.

“Thank Captain Kohl for this,” Lily remarks, pulling several different canisters into her arms. She motions her head toward a crate filled with dark glass bottles. “Grab some of that, we’ll need it to keep warm.”

Regina shakes her head when she uncorks a bottle and smells rum, but brings a bottle for each of them back up to the beach. Lily has started unrolling bedrolls into a triangle, the center clearly meant for the fire. Regina looks up to the sky to discern the time, but she can’t come up with much. “When is morning?” She asks.

“Weeks from now, probably. Night and day are like seasons here, we’re in the middle of night, when the moon is at its fullest. Each day takes months to pass; it’s part of why we don’t age in Neverland. We do, in our heads, but our bodies are stuck in limbo. It’ll be brighter in the jungle, everything seems to glow there.” Lily sits on a mat and twists open a jar, taking out a piece of dried meat to chew on. She eyes the pile of sticks pointedly and then Regina. “You arrange it, I bring the fire. That’s how it works.”

Regina resists killing Lily for her annoying tone and arranges the twigs and thicker sticks into a mediocre pile, lining them with a circle of stones to keep the coals contained. Lily shrugs when the witch sits back, leaning forward briefly to breathe what looks like a hot mist onto the wood. It glows from within, as if embers were already formed, and flames engulf it, trailing up toward the stars.

Lily tosses a bottle of rum and some food in Regina’s direction and reclines on her roll, eyes trained blankly ont he fire. “When Emma gets back, we’ll make a plan. Until then, drink and hope for the best.” She raises her own bottle in a weak cheers before gulping rum down and rolling onto her side.   

Regina glares at her back and takes a long drink of rum, wiping her mouth with a hard sigh. After slipping out of her boots and cloak, she spends the better part of the next few hours staring into the flames. She can’t help thinking of her son; his soft brown hair and ridiculous nose, far too big for his small face. She imagines the two of them home, standing side by side at her cauldron. He doesn’t need the stepping stool these days, growing more and more as time passes.

She was so _foolish_ , to leave him alone in their cabin at night. Regina knows he sneaks out to the courtyard sometimes, but he’s still close to her, still safe. Love was blinding her, in good and bad ways. It was not Emma’s fault that she grew up to be a this emotional, mysterious, multi-faceted, breathtaking person, but in the moment her heart chides her. Cora’s voice lingers in the shadows of her mind: _“Love is weakness_.”

It is, she knows, but to be this weak has given her many new strengths. Or old, forgotten ones, she can’t figure out which. Regina doesn’t remember what her happy, young self used to be like. She’s glad not to, it might have hurt more as she aged.

Regina’s broken from her brooding by splashing, a figure emerging from the tide. The moonlight illuminates Emma Swan as she heaves herself onto the sand, water still lapping over her bare feet. The witch sighs and stands, going to Emma and bringing the rum with. The wet woman is panting and has pieces of seaweed in her hair that Regina begins to pick out, settling beside her for a few silent moments.

She steadies the rum in the sand and reaches down to the hem of her pants, rolling up the hems so that she can touch the water with her toes. It was cold and she frowned down at Emma, who was still catching her breath and covered in soaked clothes. Regina closes her eyes and focuses, bringing a hand to Emma’s arm. She attempts to dry her with magic, and she can feel it crawling out of her fingers, slowly but firmly.

Opening her eyes, she sees it doesn’t do much good, but Emma’s clothes are now dry, even if her side is covered in wet sand. Her hair isn’t dripping anymore, but it still sticks to her face, some strands beginning to curl. It’s come loose from the braid, blue ribbon wrapped around Emma’s wrist.  

“You’ll get it all back in the jungle,” Emma rasps quietly. “That’s where the magic lives.”

“Despite Henry’s expansive book knowledge and keen interest in other lands, I find myself in the dark here. Quite literally.” Regina purses her lips and sighs, helping Emma sit up. “I can’t believe you swam around the island.”

“Why do you think I’ve got such great arms?” She laughs tiredly, moving a hand to rub one shoulder. Regina has to smirk at that, looking away to grab the rum bottle and hand it to Emma. She takes a long sip before thanking Regina. “Pan’s back on the island, but his camp is silent at the moment. He usually stays up playing the flute when the boys go to bed, but he’s absent tonight. He knows we’re here, but not where.

“After we rest we’ll move inland, do some tracking and see if we can find where he’s keeping Henry.”

“Will he hurt him?” Regina asks, and Emma looks at her softly.

“No, he won’t. He may be a tyrant and a fan of playing dangerous games, but he won’t hurt Henry. He’s afraid of me, in his own way, and he knows what I’ve been wanting to do to him since I first escaped this island.” Emma grits her teeth for a moment. “Getting Henry back is why we are here, and we _will_ do that, no matter the cost. Once he’s safe, I’m going to kill Pan.”

“You’re _human_ Emma, even if you do have magic. You can’t expect to be able to match someone so powerful and actually immortal. From what I gather, he’s less killable than the Dark One, who I _have_ thought of killing many times over but never do. I know my boundaries.” Emma shakes her head and drinks again, resting her elbows on her knees.

“He _stole_ me, Regina,” she whispers toward the sand. “He took me away and brought me to this _fucking_ island; this cold, empty place. I’ve spent my entire life learning to fight and survive, to give up everything that matters to keep going, and I did it without thinking. Being here, with nowhere to hide and no way to escape, it was one of the only times I’ve been afraid.”

_I know the other time_ , Regina thinks, her hands coming to Emma’s cheeks to turn her face. There are tears in Emma’s eyes and Regina aches, she _aches_ , for her son and for Emma.

“He was so small,” Emma chokes, her lips trembling. “He was so small when he was born. I look at him now and I can still see that baby in your arms. I didn’t even hold him, Regina. I held Neal when he died, but I never held Henry.  

“I should have held him.”

She pulls Emma into her arms as she begins to sob, loud wails echoing over the waves. Regina holds Emma’s head against her chest and tries to soothe her, hand trailing through her tangled blonde locks while the other stays firm against Emma’s neck. She doesn’t say anything, because she never has anything to say when Emma cries. It happens rarely and all Regina can do is be there.

When Henry first scraped his knee on the forest floor she put him in her lap and rocked him back and forth, healing his bloody leg after he’d stopped crying. He only cried when he was hurt, every other moment was filled with laughter. Regina wonders if he hides things, too, like Emma; what he would cry about other than pain.

“I’m so sorry,” Emma says into her chest after a while, harrowed breaths leaving her shaking against Regina.

“I told you earlier not to apologize,” Regina reminds her, still petting her hair. “I’m angry, Emma, but not at you. I know Henry was taken because of your tryst with Pan but we couldn’t have kept him hidden away forever. He was bound to leave that forest one day, and who’s to say he wouldn’t have been taken the second he was out of our protection?”

“I’ll get him back for you, Regina, I will.”

“I know, my dear,” the witch sighs. “I know.”


End file.
